Much Ado (2022) Movie Script
1
- We are Aragon!
We are Aragon!
We are Aragon!
We are Aragon!
- I learn in this letter
that Pedro of Aragon
comes this night to Tanglewood.
- He is very near by this:
he was not three
leagues when I left him.
- Hm.
- I find that Pedro
had bestowed much honor
on a young man called Claudio.
- Most deserved on his part.
He hath born himself beyond
the promise of his age,
doing, in the figure of a
lamb, the feats of a lion.
- He hath an uncle here who
will be very much glad of it.
- I pray you, is Signior
Mountanto returned
from the wars or no?
- What is he that
you ask for, niece?
- My cousin means Benedick.
- Oh, he's returned;
and as pleasant as ever he was,
stuffed with all
honorable virtues.
- It is indeed so.
He is no less than
a stuffed man.
But for the stuffing,
well, we're all mortal.
- You must not mistake my niece.
There is a kind of merry war
betwixt 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
and now is the whole
man governed with one.
- I see the gentleman
is not in your books.
- No, and if he were,
I would burn my study.
- I will hold friends
with you, lady.
- Do, good friend.
But I pray, 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 Claudio.
- Oh, lord, he'll hang
upon him like a disease.
He is sooner caught
than the pestilence
and the taker runs
presently mad.
- You will never run mad, niece?
- No.
Not 'til a hot January.
- Pedro is approached.
- God help the noble Claudio.
If he hath caught the Benedick,
it'll cost him a thousand
pound ere he's be cured.
- Big brother Leonato,
you are come to meet
your trouble.
The fashion of the
world is to avoid cost,
and you encounter it.
- Never came trouble to
my house in your likeness.
- You embrace your
charge too willingly.
I think this is your daughter?
- Her mother
hath many times told me so.
- Were you in doubt,
sir, that you asked her?
- No.
For then you were a child.
- Oh, truly, the lady
fathers herself.
Be happy, lady, for you are
like an honorable father.
- Let me bid you welcome.
Being reconciled to our
captain, your brother,
I owe you all duty.
- I thank you.
I'm not of many words,
but I thank you.
- If she
be Leonato's daughter,
she would not have his
head on her shoulders
for the whole world,
as like him as she is.
- I wonder that you will
still be talking, Benedick.
Nobody marks you.
- What,
my dear Lady Disdain!
Are you yet living?
- Is it possible
disdain should die
when she hath such meat
food to feed it as Benedick?
Courtesy itself must
convert to disdain
if you come in her presence.
- Then is courtesy a turncoat.
For it is certain that 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 be troubled
with a pernicious suitor.
I thank God and my cold blood
I'm of your humor for that.
I'd 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 escape
a predestinate scratched face.
- Scratching could
not make it worse
an 'twere such a
face as yours were.
- Well, you a rare
parrot-teacher.
- A bird of my tongue's
better than a beast of yours.
- Keep your way.
In God's name, I have done.
- You always
end with a jade's trick.
I know you of old.
- In mine eye she
is the sweetest lady
that ever I looked on.
- I hope you have no intent
to turn husband, have you?
- Ah, if Hero would be my wife.
- Ah, what secret
hath held you here?
- I would your grace would
constrain me to tell.
- I charge thee
on thy 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.
- Amen, if you
love her.
For the lady is
very well worthy.
- You speak this to fetch me in.
- Mm, by my troth,
I speak my thought.
- And, in faith, I spoke mine.
- And by my two troths
and faiths, I spoke mine.
- That I love her, I feel.
- And that she is
worthy, I know.
- That I neither feel
how she should be loved,
nor know how she
should be worthy
is the opinion that fire
can't melt out of me.
I will die in it at the stake.
- I shall see there, ere I
die, look pale with love.
- With anger, with
sickness, with hunger.
Not with love.
Prove that ever I lose
more blood with love
than I get again with drinking,
hang me in a bottle like a cat
and shoot at me.
And he that hits me,
let him be clapped on the
shoulder and called Adam.
- Well, as time shall try.
"In time the savage
bull doth bear a yoke."
- 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 violently painted
and in such great
letters as they write,
"Here is good horse to hire,"
signify under my sign,
"Here you may see
Benedick, the married man."
- Well, if ever thou does
fall from this faith,
it will prove a
notable argument.
- Nay, mock not, mock not.
Ere you flout old ends further,
examine your conscience.
And so I leave you.
- Pedro, you may do me good.
- My love is thine to teach.
And teach it but how
and thou shalt see
how apt it is to
learn any hard lesson.
- When we went onward
on this ended action,
I looked upon her with
an eye that liked.
But had a rougher task in hand
than to drive liking
to the name of love.
But now I am returned,
those thoughts have
left their places vacant
and in their rooms
come thronging soft
and delicate desires,
all prompting me how
fair young Hero is.
- Thou will be like
a lover presently
and tire the hearer
with a book of words.
If thou dost love fair Hero,
cherish it.
Thou shalt have her.
Was't not to this end
that thou began to
twist so fine a story?
- Oh, but lest my liking
might too sudden seem,
I would have salved it
with a longer treatise.
- What need the bridge much
broader than the flood?
Oh, I know.
We shall have reveling tonight.
I will assume thy
part in some disguise
and tell fair Hero I am Claudio.
And in her bosom,
unclasp my heart
and take her hearing prisoner
with the force and strong
encounter of my amorous tale.
And in conclusion, she
shall be thine.
Er...
In practice, let us
put it presently.
- What the good-year.
Why are you thus
out of measure sad?
- There is no measure in
the occasion that breeds,
therefore the sadness
is without limit.
- Ah, 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 cannot hide what I am.
I must be sad when
I have cause and--
- Yea, but you must not
make the full show of this
'til you may do so
without controlment.
You have of late stood
out against your brother.
Now, 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 his 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'm a plain-dealing villain.
- Can you make no use
of your discontent?
- I make all use of
it, for I use it only.
What news, Borachio?
- Your brother 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
brother's right hand.
- Who?
The most exquisite Claudio?
- Even he.
- And who, and who?
Which way looks he?
- Marry, on Hero, the
daughter and heir of Leonato.
- A very
forward March-chick!
How came you to this?
- Being entertained
for a perfumer,
I was smoking.
Comes me Pedro and Claudio,
hand in hand in sad conference.
I there heard it agreed upon
that Pedro should
woo Hero for himself,
and having obtained her,
give her to Claudio.
- Well, 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?
- To the death.
- How now, brother!
Er, where is my
cousin, your son?
Hath he provided this music?
- He's very busy about it.
But, brother,
I can tell you strange news
that you yet dreamt not of.
- Are they good?
- Well, as the
event stamps them.
Pedro, our Captain, and Claudio
were thus much overheard
by a man of mine.
Pedro discovered to Claudio
that he loved my niece,
your daughter.
I'll send for him and you
can question him yourself.
- Oh, no, no.
We will hold it as a dream
till it appear itself.
But I will acquaint
my daughter withal,
that she may be better
prepared for an answer,
if peradventure this be true.
I cry you mercy, friend.
Good cousin, have a
care this busy time.
Go you with me,
and I will use your skill.
- Was not 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.
- He is of a very
melancholy disposition.
- 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.
- By my troth, niece,
thou will never
get thee a husband
if thou be so shrewd
of thy tongue.
- Just!
If God 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.
- You may light on
a husband that hath no beard.
- What should I do with him?
Dress him up in my apparel
and making my
waiting gentlewoman?
He that had a beard
is more than a youth.
And he that had no beard
is less than a man.
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 bear-ward and
lead his apes into Hell.
- And go you into Hell?
- No.
But to the gate.
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's for the heavens.
He shows me where
the bachelors sit
and there live we as
merry as the day is long.
- Well, Hero, I trust you'll
be ruled by your father.
- Yes, faith, it
is my cousin's duty
to make curtsy and say,
"Father, as it please you."
But yet, for all that, cousin,
let him be a handsome fellow,
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 'til 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.
- Daughter, remember
what I told you.
If Pedro do solicit you in that
kind, you know your answer.
- The fault will be
in the music, cousin.
If you not be
wooed in good time,
if Pedro be too important,
tell him there is
measure in every thing
and so dance out your answer.
For hear me, Hero,
wooing, wedding, and repenting
is such as a scotch jig,
a measure, and a cinque pace.
The first suit is hot and hasty,
full as fantastical.
The wedding, mannerly, modest,
full of state and ancientry.
Then comes repentance,
with his bad legs,
falls into a cinque pace
faster and faster, 'til
he sink into his grave.
- Cousin, you apprehend
passing shrewdly.
- I have a good eye, Uncle.
I can see a church by daylight.
- The revelers are entering.
- Well, I would that
you would 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 better.
The hearers will cry out, Amen!
- Oh, God, match me
with a good dancer.
- Amen!
- And, God,
keep him out of my sight
for when the dance is done!
Answer, clerk.
- No more words.
The clerk is answered!
- I know you well enough.
You're the coach.
- Antonio?
At a word, I am not.
- I know you by the
waggling of your head.
- I tell you true,
I do but counterfeit him.
- You could not
do him so ill-well
unless you were the very man.
- Here's his dry
hand, up and down.
You are he.
- No, no--
- You are he.
- At a word, I am not!
- Go to, mum, you are he.
Graces will appear
and there's an end.
- Ah!
- Will you not tell
me who told you so?
- No, you shall pardon me.
- Nor will you not
tell me who you are?
- Not yet.
- That I was disdainful,
that I had my good wit
out of the "Hundred
Merry Tales."
Well, this was
Benedick that said so.
- Erm, who's he?
- I'm 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
captain's jester.
A very dull fool.
Only his gift is in devising
impossible slanders.
None but libertines
delight in him
and the commendation is not in
his wit, but in his villainy,
for he both pleases men
and angers them and then
they laugh at him and
beat him.
I'm sure he is in the fleet.
I would he had boarded me.
- Well, when I
know the gentleman,
I'll tell him what you say.
- Do!
Do, he'll but break a
comparison or two on me, which,
peradventure not marked
or not laughed at,
strikes him into
melancholy and then...
We must follow the leaders.
- In every good thing.
- Nay.
If they lead to an ill, I'll
leave them at the next turning.
- That Beatrice should
know me and not know me.
The captain's fool!
It may be that I go under
that title because I am merry.
But so I am apt to
do myself wrong.
I am not so reputed.
Is is the base, though bitter,
disposition of Beatrice that
puts the world into her person
and so gives me out.
I'll be revenged as I may.
- 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 favor.
For God defend the lute
should be like the case.
- But my visor is
Philemon's roof
and within the house is Jove.
- Why, then, your
visor should be thatched.
- Speak low.
If you speak love.
- Sure my brother
is amorous on Hero.
- And that is Claudio.
I know him by his bearing.
- Are not you Benedick?
- You know me well, I am he.
- You're very near my
brother in his love.
He is enamored on Hero.
I pray you, dissuade
him from her.
She is no equal for his birth.
You may do the part of
an honest man in it.
- How know you he loves her?
- I heard him swear
his affection.
- So did I, too.
He swore he would
marry her tonight.
- Come.
Let us to the banquet.
- Thus answer I in
the name of Benedick,
but hear these ill news
with the ears of Claudio.
- Claudio.
- Yea, the same.
- Come, will you go with me?
- Whither?
- Even to the next willow.
About your own business.
And what fashion will
you wear the garland of?
About your neck like
the usurer's chain or
under your arm like
the lieutenant's scarf?
You must wear it one way.
Pedro hath got your Hero.
- I wish him joy of her.
- Spoken like the honest drover:
so they sell bullocks.
But did you think the
captain would serve you thus?
- I pray you, leave me.
- Now you strike
like the blind man.
'twas the boy that
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 sedges.
- Now, Benedick,
where's Claudio?
Did you see him?
- I found him here, melancholy
as a lodge in a warren.
Told him, I think
I told him true,
that your grace had got the
good will of the young lady.
And I offered him my
company to a willow tree,
either to make him a
garland, as being forsaken,
or to tie 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 with
finding a birds' nest
show it his companion,
who steals it.
- Wilt thou make a
trust a transgression?
The transgression
is in the stealer.
- Yet, the garland he
might have worn himself,
and the rod he might
have bestowed on you,
who, as I take it, have
stolen his birds' nest.
- I will but teach them to sing.
And restore them to the owner.
- If their singing
answer your saying.
- The Lady Beatrice
hath a quarrel to you.
The gentleman she
danced with told her
she is much wronged by you.
- Oh, she misused me!
She told me, not knowing
that I'd been myself,
that I was the captain's jester.
That I was duller
than a great thaw,
huddling jest upon jest.
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'd be no living near her.
She would infect
to the north star.
I would not marry her,
though she were endowed
with all Adam left him
ere he transgressed.
Come, talk not of her.
You'll find her the infernal
Ate in good apparel.
I would to God some
scholar would conjure her.
For certainly,
while she is here,
a man may live as quiet
in Hell as in a sanctuary
and people sin upon purpose
'cause they would go thither.
So, indeed, all
disquiet, horror,
and perturbation follows her.
- Look, he she comes.
- Will your grace
command me any service?
I will go on the slightest
errand now to the Antipodes
that you can devise
to send me on.
I will fetch you
a tooth-picker now
from the furthest inch of Asia,
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.
- Oh, God, here's
a dish I love not.
I cannot endure my Lady Tongue.
- Come, lady, come.
You have lost the
heart of Benedick.
- Indeed.
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 off me with false dice,
therefore you 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,
lest I should prove
the mother of fools.
- Why, how now, Claudio?
Wherefore are you sad?
- Not sad, Pedro.
- How, then, sick?
- Neither.
- He is neither sad, nor
sick, nor merry, nor well.
But civil.
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.
- Speak, cousin.
Or if you cannot, stop
his mouth with a kiss
and let him not speak neither.
- Speak, Claudio.
'Tis your cue.
- Silence is the
perfectest herald of joy.
I were but little happy,
if I could say how much.
As you are mine, I am yours.
I give away myself for you
and dote upon the exchange.
- Ah, in faith, lady,
you have a merry heart.
- Yea, I thank it, poor fool.
It keeps on the
windy side of care.
My cousin tells him in his
ear that he is in her heart.
- Hero,
Will you marry me?
Yes?
- 'Tis so.
Claudio shall marry the
daughter of Leonato.
- Yea, but I can cross it.
- Any bar, any cross,
any impediment will be
medicinable to me.
I am sick in displeasure to him
and whatsoever comes
athwart his affection
ranges evenly with mine.
How canst thou
cross this marriage?
- I think I told you how much
I'm in the favor of Margaret.
- I remember.
- I can, at any unseasonable
instant of the night,
appoint her to look out
of Hero's chamber window.
- What life is in that, to be
the death of this marriage?
- The poison of that
lies in you to temper.
To misuse your brother,
to vex Claudio,
undo Hero, to kill Leonato.
Look you for any other issue?
- Only to despite them,
I will endeavor anything.
- Go then.
Find me a meet hour to draw
Pedro and Claudio alone.
Tell them that you know
that Hero loves me.
Intend a kind of zeal
both to Pedro and Claudio
that you have discovered thus.
And
bring them to see this
the very night before
the intended wedding.
For in the meantime,
I will so fashion the matter
that there shall appear
such seeming truth
of Hero's disloyalty
that jealousy shall
be called assurance
and all preparation overthrown.
- Grow this to what
adverse issue it can,
I will put it in practice.
Be cunning in the working this
and thy fee is a
thousand ducats.
- Be you constant
with your accusation
and my cunning
shall not shame me.
- When are you married?
- Why, every day, tomorrow.
- Oh!
Good Lord, for alliance.
Thus goes everyone
to the world but I,
and I am sunburnt.
I may sit in a corner and
cry heigh-ho for a husband.
- Oh, 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?
- No.
Er, unless I might have
another for working days.
Your grace is too costly
to wear every day.
But I beseech you, 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 mother cried and then
there was a star danced
and under that was I born.
Cousins, God give you joy!
- By my troth, she's
a well-spirited lady.
- She mocks all her
wooers out of suit.
There is little of
the melancholy element
in her.
- I will undertake one
of Hercules' labors,
which is to bring
Benedick and Beatrice
into a mountain of affection,
the one with the other.
- Oh, Lord! If they
were but a week married,
they would talk themselves mad.
My boy, I am for you.
- Oh, and I.
- And you, too, gentle Hero?
- I will do any modest
office to help my cousin.
- I will teach you how
to humor your cousin
so that she shall fall
in love with Benedick.
And I, with you two's help,
will so practice
on Benedick that,
in despite of his quick
wit and his queasy stomach,
he shall fall in
love with Beatrice.
Go in with me.
I will tell you my drift.
- Boy!
In my room lies a racket.
Fetch it and come hither.
- I am here already.
- I know that.
But I would have you
hence and here again.
I do much wonder that one man,
seeing how much
another man is a fool
when he dedicates his
behaviors 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.
- See you where Benedick is?
- Oh, very well.
- Come, Balthasar, we'll
hear that song again.
- Oh!
Tax not so bad a
voice to slander music
any more than once.
- Oh, it is the witness
still of excellence
that he puts a strange
face to his own perfection.
- Now, divine air!
Now is his soul ravished!
- By my troth, a good song.
- And an ill singer.
- Farewell.
- Ah.
You!
- Now, Ursula, when Beatrice
doth come, my talk to thee
must be how Benedick is
sick in love with her.
- Fear you not my
part of the dialogue.
- No, truly, Ursula!
She's too disdainful.
I know her spirits
are as coy and wild
as haggerds of the rock.
Look, where Beatrice,
like a lapwing,
runs close by the ground
to hear our conference.
- Then go we near her,
that her ear lose nothing
of the false sweet bait
that we lay for it.
- Ah, come hither, Antonio!
What was it you
told me of today,
your niece Beatrice was
in love with Benedick?
- But are you sure that
Benedick loves Beatrice
so entirely?
- So says Pedro
and my new-trothed Claudio.
- Stalk on, stalk
on, the fowl sits.
I did never think that lady
would have loved any man.
- No, nor I, neither.
But most wonderful that she
should dote on Benedick,
whom she hath in all outward
behaviors seemed ever to abhor.
- Is't possible?
Sits the wind in that corner?
- Er, by my troth, I cannot
tell what to think of it
but that she loves him
with an enraged affection.
It is past the
infinite of thought.
- And did they bid
you tell her of it?
- They did entreat me
to acquaint her of it.
But I persuaded them,
if they loved Benedick,
to let 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?
- What effects of
passion shows she?
- Bait the hook
well, this fish will bite.
- What effects?
Erm, well, she will sit and, er,
well, you heard
Hero tell you how.
- Er, she did indeed.
- How?
How, pray you?
You amaze me!
I would have thought her
spirit would be invincible
against all assaults
of affection.
- She is so self-endeared.
Nature never framed
a woman's heart
of proudest 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 all matters else seem week.
She cannot love.
- He hath taken the
infection. Hold it up.
- Hath she made her
affection known to Benedick?
- No.
And swears she never will.
That's her torment.
- Ah, 'tis true, indeed.
Hero says.
"Shall I," says she, "that
have so oft encountered him
with scorn, write to
him that I love him?"
- "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."
- And then down upon
her knees she falls,
weeps, sobs, beats her
heart, tears her hair,
prays, curses, "Oh,
sweet Benedick!
"God give me patience!"
- I never yet saw man,
how wise, how rarely featured,
but she would
spell him backward.
So turns she every
man the wrong side out
and never gives to
truth and virtue
that which simpleness
and merit purchaseth.
- It were good that
Benedick knew of it
by some other, if she
will not discover it.
- But who dare tell her so?
If I should speak,
she would mock me into air.
Oh, she would laugh
me out of myself
and press me to death with wit.
- She is an excellent sweet lady
and out of all suspicion,
she's virtuous.
- And she's exceeding wise.
- In everything but
in loving Benedick.
Now, pray thee,
tell Benedick of it
and hear what he will say.
- No, rather,
I will go to Benedick
and counsel him
to fight against his passion.
And, truly, I will devise
some honest slanders
to stain my cousin with.
Therefore, let Benedick,
like covered fire,
consume away in sighs,
waste inwardly.
It were a better death
than die with mocks,
which is as bad as
die with tickling.
- Gentlemen, will you walk?
Dinner is ready.
- 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?
They say that lady is fair.
'Tis a truth,
I can bear 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 chance have
some odd quirks
and remnants of
wit broken on me,
but shall quips
and sentences and
these paper bullets of the brain
awe a man from the
career of his humor?
No, the world must be peopled.
- Stand I condemned for
pride and scorn so much?
Benedick...
Benedick, love on.
I will requite thee,
taming my wild heart
with thy loving hand.
If thou dost love my
kindness will incite thee
to bind our loves up.
For others say thou dost deserve
and I believe it better
than reportingly.
- She's limed, I warrant you.
We have caught her.
- If it proves so, then
loving goes by haps.
Some Cupid kills with
arrows, some with traps.
- Gallants, I am
not as I have been.
- So say I.
Methinks you are sadder.
- I hope he be in love.
- Oh, hang him, truant.
There isn't a true
drop of blood in him
to be truly touched with love.
If he be sad, he
wants money.
- Oh, if he be not in
love with some woman,
there's no believing old signs.
- He rubs himself with civet.
Can you smell him out by that?
- Oh that's as much as to say,
the sweet youth's in love.
- Oh, the greatest
note of it is...
Oh, is melancholy.
- And when was
he want to wash his face?
- Yea, or to paint himself?
For the which, I hear
what they say of him.
Conclude, conclude,
he is in love.
- Nay, but I know who loves him.
- That would I know, too.
I warrant, one
that knows him not.
- Yes, and his ill conditions.
And, in despite of
it all, dies for him.
- Oh, she shall be buried
with her face upwards.
- Oh!
- Oh!
- Benny!
- Hero and Ursula have by this
played their parts
with Beatrice.
- My brother.
God save you.
- Good den, brother.
- If your leisure served,
I would speak with you.
- In private?
- If it please you.
Yet, Claudio may hear.
For what I would
speak of concerns him.
- What's the matter?
- Mean you to be
married tomorrow?
- 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 manifest.
- Why?
What's the matter?
- I came hither to tell you and,
circumstances shortened,
for she has been too
long a talking of,
the lady is disloyal.
- Who, Hero?
- Even she.
Leonato's Hero.
Your Hero.
Every man's Hero.
- Disloyal?
- The word is too good to
paint out her wickedness.
I could say she were worse.
Think you of a worse title
and I will fit her to it.
Wonder not till further warrant.
Go but with me tonight,
you will see her
chamber window entered,
even the night before
her wedding day.
If you love her then,
tomorrow wed her.
- 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 anything tonight
why I should not marry her
tomorrow in the congregation,
where I should wed,
there will I shame her.
- And as I wooed for
thee to obtain her,
I will join with
thee to disgrace her.
- I will disparage
her no farther 'til
you are my witnesses.
Bear it coldly but 'til midnight
and let the issue show itself.
- Troth, I think your
other were better.
- No, pray thee, good Meg.
I'll wear this.
- Oh, by my troth,
it's not so good
and I warrant your
cousin will say so.
- My cousin's a fool,
and thou art another.
I'll wear none but this.
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, my lady?
Of speaking honorably?
Is not marriage
honorable in a beggar?
Is not your love honorable
without marriage?
If bad thinking do not
wrest true speaking,
I'll offend nobody.
Is there harm in
heavier for a husband?
None, I think,
it be the right husband
and the right wife.
Otherwise, 'tis
light and not heavy.
Ask Beatrice else, here she is.
- Sweet Hero.
- Why how now?
Do you speak with the sick tune?
- Mm.
I am out of all
other tune, methinks.
- Oh, clap into a light o' love
that goes without burden.
Do you sing it
and I'll dance it.
- Ye light of love
with your heels!
Then if your husband
have stables enough,
you'll see he shall
lack no barns.
- Oh, illegitimate construction!
I scorn that with my heels.
- 'Tis almost ten
o'clock, cousin.
'Tis time you were ready.
By my troth, I am exceeding ill.
Heigh-ho.
- For a hawk, a
horse, or a husband?
- What
means the fool, trow?
- Oh, nothing, I.
But God give everyone
their heart's desire.
- This Claudio gave me.
It is an excellent perfume.
- I am stuffed,
cousin, I cannot smell.
- A maid, and stuffed?
There's a goodly catching
of a cold.
- God help me.
God help me.
How long have you
professed apprehension?
- Ever since you lost it.
Doth not my wit
become me rarely?
- It is not seen enough.
You should wear it in your cap.
By my troth, I am sick.
- Get you some distilled
Carduus Benedictus
and lay it on your heart.
It is the only
thing for a qualm.
- There thou prickest
her with a thistle.
- Benedictus?
Why Benedictus?
You have some moral
in this Benedictus?
- Moral?
No, by my troth, I
have no moral meaning.
I meant plain holy-thistle.
You may perchance think
that I think you're in love.
Nay, by'r lady, I am no such
fool to think what I list,
that you will be in love
or that you are in love
or that you can be in love.
Yet, Benedick was
such another and
now, in despite of his heart,
he eats his meat
without grudging.
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!
- Better, better!
Faster!
Are you men?
Heels up, Seacole.
Knees up, Verges.
That bum's out again, Otecake!
Are you good men and true?
- Yeah!
- Yeah!
- Or else it were pity but
we should suffer salvation,
body and soul!
- Nay, that were a
punishment too good for you,
if you should have
any allegiance in you.
First, who think you
the most desartless man
to be constable?
- Hugh Otecake, sir,
or George Seacole.
For they can write and read.
- Come hither, neighbor Seacole.
God hath blessed you
with a good name.
You are thought here to be
the most senseless and fit man
for the constable of the watch.
Therefore, bear you the lantern.
This is your charge.
You are to comprehend
all vagrom men.
You are to bid those that are
not drunk, get them to bed.
- How, if they will not?
- Why, then, let them alone
'til they are drunk.
If they make not then
the better answer,
you may say they are not
the men you took them for.
Well, masters, goodnight.
- Well, masters,
we hear our charge.
- Oh, Hero!
Hero!
- Claudio?
- What Conrade!
Conrade, I say!
- Forward with thy tale.
- I will, like a true drunkard,
utter all to thee.
Know that I have earned of John
a thousand ducats.
That I have tonight wooed
Margaret, by the name of Hero.
She leans me out of
Hero's chamber window
and bids me a thousand
times goodnight.
I tell this tale too vilely.
- Some treason.
- Shh!
- Didst thou hear somebody?
- No.
'Twas the vane on the house.
- Hm.
I should first tell thee
how Pedro, Claudio, and John
planted, placed, and
possessed by John,
saw afar off in the
orchard this, er,
amiable encounter.
- And thought they
Margaret was Hero?
- Two of them did.
Pedro and Claudio.
The devil John knew
it was Margaret.
And, partly by his oaths,
which first possessed them,
and partly by the dark night,
which did deceive them,
but chiefly by my villainy,
which confirmed any
slander John had made,
away Claudio went
enraged.
- We charge you, in the
captain's name, stand!
Call up Dogberry!
We have here recovered the
most dangerous piece of lechery
that ever was known
in the commonwealth!
- Masters--
- Never speak!
We charge you, go with us!
- We are like to prove a
goodly commodity.
- Commodity in
question, I warrant you.
Come, we'll obey you.
- Oh God's, my life!
Come.
Let them be opinioned.
Let the watch come forth!
- What would you with
me, honest neighbor?
- Marry, sir, I 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?
- Goodman Verges, sir, speaks
a little off the matter.
A young man, sir, and his
wits are not so blunt as,
God help, I would
desire they were.
- Neighbors, you are tedious.
- Oh.
If it should please
your worship to say so.
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, and 'twere a thousand
pound more than 'tis.
- And so would I.
- I would fain
know what you have to say.
- Marry, sir, our watch tonight,
excepting your
worship's presence,
ha' taken a couple of--
- A good young man,
sir, he will be talking.
As they say, when the ale
is in, the wit is out.
Well said, in faith,
neighbor Verges.
Well, God's a good man and
two men ride of a horse,
one must ride behind.
- Leonato!
They stay for you to give
your daughter to her husband.
- I must leave.
- It shall be
suffigance.
- Leonato.
- I'll wait
upon them. I am ready.
- You come hither
to marry this lady.
- No.
- Ah!
Er, to be married to her.
Friar, you've come to marry her.
- Lady, you come hither
to be married to this man.
- I do.
- 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 love.
- Know you any, Claudio?
- Stand thee by, Friar.
Father, by your leave,
would you with free
and unconstrained soul
give me this maid,
your daughter?
- As freely, son, as
God did give her me.
- What have I to give you back,
whose worth may counterpoise
this rich and precious gift?
- Nothing, unless
you render her again.
- Sweet Pedro, 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 honor.
Behold, how like a
maid she blushes here.
Oh, 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.
That blush is
guiltiness, not modesty.
- What do you mean?
- Not to be married.
Not to knit my soul
to an approved wanton.
- My Lord, er...
If you, in your own proof,
have vanquished the
resistance of her youth,
and made defeat
of her virginity--
- No, I know what you would say.
If I had known
her, you would say
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
showed bashful sincerity
and comely love.
- Seemed I ever
otherwise to you?
- Oh, out on thee!
Seeming!
I will write against it.
You seem to me as
Dian in her orb.
But you are more intemperate
in your blood than Venus,
or those pampered animals that
rage in savage sensuality.
- Is my love well, that
he doth speak so wide?
- Sweet Pedro,
why speak not you?
- What shall I speak?
I stand dishonored,
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.
- True?
Oh, God.
- Leonato, stand I here?
Is this face Hero's?
Are our eyes our own?
- All this is so.
But what of this?
- Oh God, defend me.
How am I beset!
What kind of catechizing
call you this?
- To make your answer
truly to your name.
- Is it not Hero?
Who can blot that name
with any just reproach?
- Marry, that can Hero.
Hero itself can blot
out Hero's virtue.
What man was he talked
with you yesternight?
Out at your window
betwixt twelve and one?
Now, if you are
maid, answer to this.
- I talked with no man
at that hour, Claudio.
- Why, then you are no maiden.
Leonato, I am sorry
that you must hear.
Upon mine honor,
myself, my brother,
and this grieved
man did see her,
hear her, at that
hour last night
talk to a ruffian at
her chamber window
who hath indeed, like a
liberal villain, confessed
the vile encounters
that they have had
a thousand times in secret.
- Fie, fie!
They're not to be named,
not to be spoke of.
There is not chastity
enough in language
without offense to utter them.
Thus, pretty lady,
I am sorry for thy
much misgovernment.
- Oh, Hero.
Fare the well.
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.
- Come.
Let us go.
These things come thus to light,
smother her spirits up.
- Hath no man's dagger
here a point for me?
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.
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.
Chid I for that at
frugal nature's frame.
One too much by thee.
Why had I one?
Why ever wast thou
lovely in my eyes?
Oh, she...
She is fallen into a pit of ink
that the wide sea
hath drops too few
to wash her clean again
and salts too little
which may season give
her foul-tainted flesh!
- Sir.
- On my soul, my
cousin is belied.
- Lady, were you her
bedfellow this last night?
- No.
Truly not.
Although, until last night,
I have this four weeks
been her bedfellow.
- Confirmed!
Confirmed!
Would the two brothers lie?
And Claudio lie,
who loved her so that,
speaking of her foulness,
washed it with tears?
Hence from her!
Let her die.
- Lady, what man is he
that you're accused of?
- They know that do accuse me.
I know none.
My father, prove you that
any man with me conversed
at hours unmeet
or that I yesternight
maintained the change of words
with any creature.
Refuse me, hate me,
torture me to death.
- Hear you--
- We have some haste, Leonato.
- Ah, some haste!
Well, fare you well!
Are you hasty now?
Huh?
Well, all is one.
- Nay, do not quarrel
with us, old man.
- Oh!
- If he could right
himself with quarreling,
some of us would lie low.
- Who wrongs him?
- Marry, thou dost wrong
me, thou dissembler, thou.
- Come, follow me, boy.
Come, sir.
Boy, come, follow me.
Sir boy, I'll whip you
from your foining fence!
Nay, as I am a
gentleman, I will.
- Brother Anthony--
- 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 anticly and show
outward hideousness
and speak of half a
dozen dangerous words,
how the may 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.
- She is dead, I think.
Hero?
- Hero?
- Hero?
Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
Hero!
Hero!
Hero!
- Hear me a little.
For I have only
been silent so long
and gave way unto this
course of fortune by
noting of the lady.
I did mark a thousand
blushing apparitions
to start into her face,
a thousand innocent
shames in angel whiteness
beat away those blushes
and in her eye there
hath appeared a fire
to burn the errors
that these boys 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 reverence,
calling, nor divinity,
if this sweet lady
lie not guiltless
under some biting error.
- I know not.
My soul doth tell
me Hero is belied.
- Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
He--
- if you go on thus,
you will kill yourself.
And it is 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.
Men can counsel and speak
comfort to that grief
which they themselves not feel.
But tasting it,
their counsel turn to passion,
which before would give
preceptial medicine to rage.
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.
Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
Why art thou, cousin?
Cousin!
Get help!
Help!
Uncle!
Benedick, Friar!
- Beatrice.
Have you wept all this while?
- Yeah, 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.
- 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.
- I do
love nothing in this world
so well as you.
Is that not 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.
- By my hand, Beatrice,
thou lovest me.
- Do not swear and eat it.
- I will swear that you love me
and make him eat it that
says I love not you.
- Will you not eat your words?
- With no sauce that can be
devised. I protest I love thee.
- Why, then...
Oh, God forgive me.
- What offense, sweet Beatrice?
- You've stayed me
in a happy hour.
I was about to
protest I loved you.
- And do so.
With all your heart.
- I love you with so
much of my heart that
none is left to protest.
- Come, bid me do
anything for thee.
- Kill Claudio.
- Not for
the wide world.
You know much of
inwardness and love is
unto Claudio and Pedro.
- You
kill me to deny it.
Farewell.
- Tarry,
sweet Beatrice.
- I am gone, though I am here.
There is no love in you.
Nay, I pray you, let me go.
- Beatrice.
Beatrice--
- In faith, I will go.
- We'll be friends first.
- You dare easier
be friends with me
than to fight with mine enemy.
- Is Claudio thine enemy?
- Is he not approved in
the height a villain,
that hath slandered, scorned,
dishonored my kinswoman?
That I were a man.
What, bear her in hand until
they come to take hands
and then, with public
accusation, uncovered slander,
unmitigated rancor, God,
that I were a man, I would,
I would eat his heart
in the marketplace!
- Hear me.
Beatrice.
- What? Talk with
a man out a window!
A proper saying.
- Nay, but Beatrice--
- Sweet Hero, she is wronged!
She is slandered.
She is undone.
- Beatrice.
- 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,
valor into compliments,
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 it.
I cannot be a man with wishing.
Therefore I will die
a woman with grieving.
- Tarry, Beatrice.
By this hand, I love thee.
- Then use it for my love
some other way than
swearing by it.
- Think you in your soul
Claudio hath wronged Hero?
- Yea.
As sure as I have a
thought or a soul.
- Enough, I am engaged.
I will challenge him.
Go, comfort your cousin.
- What how now, Cousin Hero.
- Come, lady, pause a while
and let my counsel
sway you in this case.
Your daughter, here,
the boys 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.
But not for that dream I
on this strange course,
but on this travail
look for greater birth.
But she dying, as it
must so be maintained,
upon the instant
she was accused,
shall be lamented, pitied,
and excused of every hearer.
So will it fair 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 appareled
in more precious habit,
more moving, delicate
and full of life
into the eye and
prospect of his soul
than when she lived indeed.
Er, and then shall he mourn,
if ever love had
interest in his liver,
and wish he did
not so accuse her,
no, though, he thought
his accusation true.
Let this be so
and doubt not but success
will fashion the event
in better shape than I can
lay it down in likelihood.
- 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 prolonged.
Have patience and endure.
- See, see, here comes
the man we went to seek.
- Ah!
Now, Benedick, what news?
- Good day.
- Oh, we have been up
and down to see thee,
for we are high-proof melancholy
and would fain have
it be beaten away.
Will thou use thy wit?
- It's in my scabbard.
Shall I draw it?
- As I am an honest
man, he looks pale.
Are thou sick, or angry?
- I pray you choose
another subject.
- I think he is angry indeed.
- Aye, if he be, he knows
how to turn his girdle.
- Shall I speak a
word in your ear?
- Oh, God bless me
from a challenge.
- You are a villain.
I jest not.
I shall make it good how you
dare, with what you dare,
and when you dare.
Do me right,
or I shall protest
your cowardice.
- I will tell thee how Beatrice
praised thy wit the other day.
I said thou had a fine wit.
"True," said she, "a fine
little one."
"No," said I, "a great wit."
"Right," say she,
"a great gross one."
"Oh, nay," said I, "a good wit."
"Just," she said,
"for it hurt nobody."
- For the wit she wept heartily
and said she cared not.
- Yea, that she did
and but for that, if she
did not hate him deadly,
she would love him dearly.
The old man's
daughter told us all.
But when shall we set
the savage bull's horn
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 leave you now to
your gossip-like humor.
You break jests like
braggarts do their blades,
which God be thanked, hurt not.
For your many courtesies,
I thank you.
I must discontinue your company.
Your brother the
bastard is fled.
As for my Lord Lackbeard
there, here and I shall meet.
And 'til then,
peace be with him.
- He is in earnest.
- In most profound earnest.
- But soft, let me be.
Pluck up, my heart, and be sad.
Did he not say my
brother was fled?
Oh, no.
Come on.
- Claudio!
To thy head, thou
hast so wronged mine
innocent child and me
that I am forced to
lay my reverence by
and with gray hairs and
bruise of many days,
do challenge thee
to trial of a man.
I say thou hast belied
mine innocent child.
Thy slander have gone through
and through her heart,
and she lies buried
with her ancestors.
Oh, in a tomb where
never scandal slept,
save this of hers,
framed by thy villainy!
- My villainy?
- Thine, Claudio!
Thine, I say!
- You say not right, old man.
- I'll prove it on
his body, if he dare,
Despite his nice fence
and active practice,
his May of youth and
bloom of lustihood.
Thou hast killed 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.
God knows I loved my niece
and she is dead,
slandered 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!
- Gentlemen, both,
we will not wake your patience.
My heart is sorry for
your daughter's death.
But, on my honor, she
was charged with nothing
but what was true--
- But
Pedro, oh, Pedro!
- And very full of proof!
- Pedro, I--
- I will not hear you!
- Oh, no?
Come, brother, away.
I will be heard!
- And shall.
Or some of us will smart for it.
- Masters, it is proved already
that you are thought
to be little better
than false knaves!
And it will go near to
be thought so shortly.
How answer you for yourselves?
- How now?
Two of my brother's men bound.
Borachio is one.
- Harken after their offense.
- Yeah.
- Come you hither, sirrah.
A word in your ear, sir.
I say to you,
it is thought you
are false knaves.
- You are an ass!
- Dost thou not
suspect my place?
- What offense have
these men done?
- Marry, sir, they have
committed false report.
Moreover, they have
spoken untruths.
Secondarily, they are slanders.
Sixth--
- Thirdly.
- And lastly, they
have belied a lady.
Thirdly--
- Sixth.
- They are verified,
unjust things and--
- To conclude.
- To conclude, they
are lying knaves.
- First, I ask thee
what they have done.
Thirdly, I ask what
is their offense.
Sixth, and lastly, why
they are committed.
Oh, and to conclude, what
you lay to their charge.
Who have you offended, masters,
that you are thus
bound to your answer?
- Hear me and let
Claudio kill me.
I have deceived
even your very eyes,
what your wisdom
could not discover,
these shallow fools
have brought to light.
Who, in the night, overheard
me confessing to this man
how John your brother
incensed me to slander Hero,
how you were brought
into the orchard
and saw me court Margaret
in Hero's garments.
How you disgraced her
when you should marry her.
The lady is dead upon mine
and John's false accusation.
And, briefly, I desire nothing
but the reward of a villain.
- Runs not this speech like
iron through your blood?
- I have drank poison
whiles he uttered it.
- But did my brother
set you onto this?
- Yea.
And paid me richly for
the practice of it.
- He is composed and
framed of treachery.
- Balthazar hath reformed
Leonato of the matter.
And, masters, do not
forget to specify
that this plaintiff here,
the offender, did call me ass.
I beseech you.
Let it be remembered
in his punishment!
- The god
of love, who sits above
and knows me.
Knows me.
Sweet Beatrice.
Wouldst thou come
when I called thee?
- Yea, Benedick, and
depart when you bid me.
- Stay but 'til then.
- Then is spoken.
Fare you well now.
Yet, ere I go,
let me go with that I came,
which is knowing what hath
passed between you and Claudio.
- Only foul words.
And thereupon, will I kiss thee?
- Foul words is but foul wind.
Foul wind is but foul breath.
And foul breath is noisome.
Therefore, I will
depart unkissed.
- Thou hast frightened the
word right out of his sense,
so forcible is thy wit.
But I will tell thee plainly,
Claudio undergoes my challenge.
I must shortly hear from him,
or subscribe him a coward.
Now, I pray thee,
tell me for which
of my bad parts
did thou first fall
in love with me?
- For them all together,
which maintained so
politic a state of evil
that they will not
admit any good parts
to intermingle with them.
But for which of my good parts
did you first
suffer love for me?
- Suffer love!
A good epithet.
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 will 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
20 that will praise himself.
- An old, an old
instance, Beatrice,
that lived in the time
of good neighbors.
If a man does not erect
in this age his own tomb
ere he dies, he will live
no longer in monument
than the bell rings
and the widow weeps.
But so much for
praising myself, who,
I myself will bear
witness, is praiseworthy.
Now, tell me, how
doth your cousin?
- Very ill.
- And how do you?
- Very ill, too.
- Serve God,
love me and mend.
- Madame!
You must come to your uncle.
Yonder's old coil at home.
It is been proved my lady Hero
hath been falsely accused,
Pedro and Claudio
mightily abused,
and John is the author of all,
who is fled and gone.
Will you come?
Presently.
- Will you go hear this news?
- I will live in thy heart,
die in thy lap,
and be buried in thy eyes.
And moreover, I will go
with thee to your uncle's.
- I know not how to pray your
patience, yet I must speak.
- I thank you for
my daughter's death.
Record it with your
high and worthy deeds.
'Twas bravely done, if
you bethink you of it.
- Choose to revenge yourself.
Impose me to what penance
your invention can
lay upon my sin.
- I cannot bid you
bid my daughter live.
That were impossible.
But I pray you both,
possess the people here
how innocent she died.
And if your love can labor
ought in sad invention--
- Tomorrow morning,
come you to the house.
Er, for since you could
not be his son-in-law,
be yet his nephew.
Antonio hath a daughter,
almost a copy of his child.
That's dead.
Give her the right you should
have given her cousin--
- And so dies my revenge.
- Oh, noble, sir,
your over-kindness doth
wring tears from me.
I do embrace your offer.
- Tomorrow, then, I
will expect your coming.
Tonight I take my leave.
- Farewell, boys.
We look for you tomorrow.
- We will not fail you.
- Until tomorrow
morning, farewell.
- Good morrow, Claudio.
Are you yet determined today
to marry with my
brother's daughter?
- I'll hold my mind.
- Ready?
Call her forth, brother.
- 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.
Tush, fear not, man.
We'll tip thy horns with gold.
- Some such strange bull
lept 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 come other reckonings
Which lady is this?
Sweet, let me see your face.
- Er, no, that you shall not,
'til you take her hand before me
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.
- A former Hero.
The Hero that is dead.
- One Hero died
defiled, but I do live.
And surely as I live,
I am a maid.
- All this amazement
can I qualify.
Erm, when after the
holy rites are ended.
I'll tell you largely
of fair Hero's "death."
Er, which is Beatrice?
- I answer to that name.
What is your will?
- Do
not you love me?
- Why, no.
No more than reason.
- Why, then your uncle,
Pedro, and Claudio
are deceived, for
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.
- Oh, come, cousin, I'm
sure you love the gentleman.
- And I'll be sworn upon
it that he loves her.
For here's a paper,
written in his hand.
A halting sonnet of
his own pure brain,
fashioned to Beatrice.
- And here's another,
writ in my cousin's hand,
stolen from her pocket,
containing her
affection unto Benedick.
- 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 you
were in a consumption.
- Peace.
I will stop your mouth.
- How dost thou, Benedick?
The savage bull?
- I'll tell thee what, Pedro.
A college of wit-crackers
cannot flout me out of my humor.
Dost thou think I care for
a satire or an epigram?
No.
Never flout at me for what
I've said against love.
For man is a giddy
thing and this
is my conclusion.
Come, come, we are friends.
Let's have a dance!
- Hey nonny, nonny!
- We are Aragon!
We are Aragon!
We are Aragon!
We are Aragon!
- I learn in this letter
that Pedro of Aragon
comes this night to Tanglewood.
- He is very near by this:
he was not three
leagues when I left him.
- Hm.
- I find that Pedro
had bestowed much honor
on a young man called Claudio.
- Most deserved on his part.
He hath born himself beyond
the promise of his age,
doing, in the figure of a
lamb, the feats of a lion.
- He hath an uncle here who
will be very much glad of it.
- I pray you, is Signior
Mountanto returned
from the wars or no?
- What is he that
you ask for, niece?
- My cousin means Benedick.
- Oh, he's returned;
and as pleasant as ever he was,
stuffed with all
honorable virtues.
- It is indeed so.
He is no less than
a stuffed man.
But for the stuffing,
well, we're all mortal.
- You must not mistake my niece.
There is a kind of merry war
betwixt 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
and now is the whole
man governed with one.
- I see the gentleman
is not in your books.
- No, and if he were,
I would burn my study.
- I will hold friends
with you, lady.
- Do, good friend.
But I pray, 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 Claudio.
- Oh, lord, he'll hang
upon him like a disease.
He is sooner caught
than the pestilence
and the taker runs
presently mad.
- You will never run mad, niece?
- No.
Not 'til a hot January.
- Pedro is approached.
- God help the noble Claudio.
If he hath caught the Benedick,
it'll cost him a thousand
pound ere he's be cured.
- Big brother Leonato,
you are come to meet
your trouble.
The fashion of the
world is to avoid cost,
and you encounter it.
- Never came trouble to
my house in your likeness.
- You embrace your
charge too willingly.
I think this is your daughter?
- Her mother
hath many times told me so.
- Were you in doubt,
sir, that you asked her?
- No.
For then you were a child.
- Oh, truly, the lady
fathers herself.
Be happy, lady, for you are
like an honorable father.
- Let me bid you welcome.
Being reconciled to our
captain, your brother,
I owe you all duty.
- I thank you.
I'm not of many words,
but I thank you.
- If she
be Leonato's daughter,
she would not have his
head on her shoulders
for the whole world,
as like him as she is.
- I wonder that you will
still be talking, Benedick.
Nobody marks you.
- What,
my dear Lady Disdain!
Are you yet living?
- Is it possible
disdain should die
when she hath such meat
food to feed it as Benedick?
Courtesy itself must
convert to disdain
if you come in her presence.
- Then is courtesy a turncoat.
For it is certain that 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 be troubled
with a pernicious suitor.
I thank God and my cold blood
I'm of your humor for that.
I'd 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 escape
a predestinate scratched face.
- Scratching could
not make it worse
an 'twere such a
face as yours were.
- Well, you a rare
parrot-teacher.
- A bird of my tongue's
better than a beast of yours.
- Keep your way.
In God's name, I have done.
- You always
end with a jade's trick.
I know you of old.
- In mine eye she
is the sweetest lady
that ever I looked on.
- I hope you have no intent
to turn husband, have you?
- Ah, if Hero would be my wife.
- Ah, what secret
hath held you here?
- I would your grace would
constrain me to tell.
- I charge thee
on thy 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.
- Amen, if you
love her.
For the lady is
very well worthy.
- You speak this to fetch me in.
- Mm, by my troth,
I speak my thought.
- And, in faith, I spoke mine.
- And by my two troths
and faiths, I spoke mine.
- That I love her, I feel.
- And that she is
worthy, I know.
- That I neither feel
how she should be loved,
nor know how she
should be worthy
is the opinion that fire
can't melt out of me.
I will die in it at the stake.
- I shall see there, ere I
die, look pale with love.
- With anger, with
sickness, with hunger.
Not with love.
Prove that ever I lose
more blood with love
than I get again with drinking,
hang me in a bottle like a cat
and shoot at me.
And he that hits me,
let him be clapped on the
shoulder and called Adam.
- Well, as time shall try.
"In time the savage
bull doth bear a yoke."
- 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 violently painted
and in such great
letters as they write,
"Here is good horse to hire,"
signify under my sign,
"Here you may see
Benedick, the married man."
- Well, if ever thou does
fall from this faith,
it will prove a
notable argument.
- Nay, mock not, mock not.
Ere you flout old ends further,
examine your conscience.
And so I leave you.
- Pedro, you may do me good.
- My love is thine to teach.
And teach it but how
and thou shalt see
how apt it is to
learn any hard lesson.
- When we went onward
on this ended action,
I looked upon her with
an eye that liked.
But had a rougher task in hand
than to drive liking
to the name of love.
But now I am returned,
those thoughts have
left their places vacant
and in their rooms
come thronging soft
and delicate desires,
all prompting me how
fair young Hero is.
- Thou will be like
a lover presently
and tire the hearer
with a book of words.
If thou dost love fair Hero,
cherish it.
Thou shalt have her.
Was't not to this end
that thou began to
twist so fine a story?
- Oh, but lest my liking
might too sudden seem,
I would have salved it
with a longer treatise.
- What need the bridge much
broader than the flood?
Oh, I know.
We shall have reveling tonight.
I will assume thy
part in some disguise
and tell fair Hero I am Claudio.
And in her bosom,
unclasp my heart
and take her hearing prisoner
with the force and strong
encounter of my amorous tale.
And in conclusion, she
shall be thine.
Er...
In practice, let us
put it presently.
- What the good-year.
Why are you thus
out of measure sad?
- There is no measure in
the occasion that breeds,
therefore the sadness
is without limit.
- Ah, 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 cannot hide what I am.
I must be sad when
I have cause and--
- Yea, but you must not
make the full show of this
'til you may do so
without controlment.
You have of late stood
out against your brother.
Now, 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 his 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'm a plain-dealing villain.
- Can you make no use
of your discontent?
- I make all use of
it, for I use it only.
What news, Borachio?
- Your brother 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
brother's right hand.
- Who?
The most exquisite Claudio?
- Even he.
- And who, and who?
Which way looks he?
- Marry, on Hero, the
daughter and heir of Leonato.
- A very
forward March-chick!
How came you to this?
- Being entertained
for a perfumer,
I was smoking.
Comes me Pedro and Claudio,
hand in hand in sad conference.
I there heard it agreed upon
that Pedro should
woo Hero for himself,
and having obtained her,
give her to Claudio.
- Well, 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?
- To the death.
- How now, brother!
Er, where is my
cousin, your son?
Hath he provided this music?
- He's very busy about it.
But, brother,
I can tell you strange news
that you yet dreamt not of.
- Are they good?
- Well, as the
event stamps them.
Pedro, our Captain, and Claudio
were thus much overheard
by a man of mine.
Pedro discovered to Claudio
that he loved my niece,
your daughter.
I'll send for him and you
can question him yourself.
- Oh, no, no.
We will hold it as a dream
till it appear itself.
But I will acquaint
my daughter withal,
that she may be better
prepared for an answer,
if peradventure this be true.
I cry you mercy, friend.
Good cousin, have a
care this busy time.
Go you with me,
and I will use your skill.
- Was not 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.
- He is of a very
melancholy disposition.
- 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.
- By my troth, niece,
thou will never
get thee a husband
if thou be so shrewd
of thy tongue.
- Just!
If God 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.
- You may light on
a husband that hath no beard.
- What should I do with him?
Dress him up in my apparel
and making my
waiting gentlewoman?
He that had a beard
is more than a youth.
And he that had no beard
is less than a man.
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 bear-ward and
lead his apes into Hell.
- And go you into Hell?
- No.
But to the gate.
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's for the heavens.
He shows me where
the bachelors sit
and there live we as
merry as the day is long.
- Well, Hero, I trust you'll
be ruled by your father.
- Yes, faith, it
is my cousin's duty
to make curtsy and say,
"Father, as it please you."
But yet, for all that, cousin,
let him be a handsome fellow,
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 'til 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.
- Daughter, remember
what I told you.
If Pedro do solicit you in that
kind, you know your answer.
- The fault will be
in the music, cousin.
If you not be
wooed in good time,
if Pedro be too important,
tell him there is
measure in every thing
and so dance out your answer.
For hear me, Hero,
wooing, wedding, and repenting
is such as a scotch jig,
a measure, and a cinque pace.
The first suit is hot and hasty,
full as fantastical.
The wedding, mannerly, modest,
full of state and ancientry.
Then comes repentance,
with his bad legs,
falls into a cinque pace
faster and faster, 'til
he sink into his grave.
- Cousin, you apprehend
passing shrewdly.
- I have a good eye, Uncle.
I can see a church by daylight.
- The revelers are entering.
- Well, I would that
you would 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 better.
The hearers will cry out, Amen!
- Oh, God, match me
with a good dancer.
- Amen!
- And, God,
keep him out of my sight
for when the dance is done!
Answer, clerk.
- No more words.
The clerk is answered!
- I know you well enough.
You're the coach.
- Antonio?
At a word, I am not.
- I know you by the
waggling of your head.
- I tell you true,
I do but counterfeit him.
- You could not
do him so ill-well
unless you were the very man.
- Here's his dry
hand, up and down.
You are he.
- No, no--
- You are he.
- At a word, I am not!
- Go to, mum, you are he.
Graces will appear
and there's an end.
- Ah!
- Will you not tell
me who told you so?
- No, you shall pardon me.
- Nor will you not
tell me who you are?
- Not yet.
- That I was disdainful,
that I had my good wit
out of the "Hundred
Merry Tales."
Well, this was
Benedick that said so.
- Erm, who's he?
- I'm 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
captain's jester.
A very dull fool.
Only his gift is in devising
impossible slanders.
None but libertines
delight in him
and the commendation is not in
his wit, but in his villainy,
for he both pleases men
and angers them and then
they laugh at him and
beat him.
I'm sure he is in the fleet.
I would he had boarded me.
- Well, when I
know the gentleman,
I'll tell him what you say.
- Do!
Do, he'll but break a
comparison or two on me, which,
peradventure not marked
or not laughed at,
strikes him into
melancholy and then...
We must follow the leaders.
- In every good thing.
- Nay.
If they lead to an ill, I'll
leave them at the next turning.
- That Beatrice should
know me and not know me.
The captain's fool!
It may be that I go under
that title because I am merry.
But so I am apt to
do myself wrong.
I am not so reputed.
Is is the base, though bitter,
disposition of Beatrice that
puts the world into her person
and so gives me out.
I'll be revenged as I may.
- 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 favor.
For God defend the lute
should be like the case.
- But my visor is
Philemon's roof
and within the house is Jove.
- Why, then, your
visor should be thatched.
- Speak low.
If you speak love.
- Sure my brother
is amorous on Hero.
- And that is Claudio.
I know him by his bearing.
- Are not you Benedick?
- You know me well, I am he.
- You're very near my
brother in his love.
He is enamored on Hero.
I pray you, dissuade
him from her.
She is no equal for his birth.
You may do the part of
an honest man in it.
- How know you he loves her?
- I heard him swear
his affection.
- So did I, too.
He swore he would
marry her tonight.
- Come.
Let us to the banquet.
- Thus answer I in
the name of Benedick,
but hear these ill news
with the ears of Claudio.
- Claudio.
- Yea, the same.
- Come, will you go with me?
- Whither?
- Even to the next willow.
About your own business.
And what fashion will
you wear the garland of?
About your neck like
the usurer's chain or
under your arm like
the lieutenant's scarf?
You must wear it one way.
Pedro hath got your Hero.
- I wish him joy of her.
- Spoken like the honest drover:
so they sell bullocks.
But did you think the
captain would serve you thus?
- I pray you, leave me.
- Now you strike
like the blind man.
'twas the boy that
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 sedges.
- Now, Benedick,
where's Claudio?
Did you see him?
- I found him here, melancholy
as a lodge in a warren.
Told him, I think
I told him true,
that your grace had got the
good will of the young lady.
And I offered him my
company to a willow tree,
either to make him a
garland, as being forsaken,
or to tie 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 with
finding a birds' nest
show it his companion,
who steals it.
- Wilt thou make a
trust a transgression?
The transgression
is in the stealer.
- Yet, the garland he
might have worn himself,
and the rod he might
have bestowed on you,
who, as I take it, have
stolen his birds' nest.
- I will but teach them to sing.
And restore them to the owner.
- If their singing
answer your saying.
- The Lady Beatrice
hath a quarrel to you.
The gentleman she
danced with told her
she is much wronged by you.
- Oh, she misused me!
She told me, not knowing
that I'd been myself,
that I was the captain's jester.
That I was duller
than a great thaw,
huddling jest upon jest.
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'd be no living near her.
She would infect
to the north star.
I would not marry her,
though she were endowed
with all Adam left him
ere he transgressed.
Come, talk not of her.
You'll find her the infernal
Ate in good apparel.
I would to God some
scholar would conjure her.
For certainly,
while she is here,
a man may live as quiet
in Hell as in a sanctuary
and people sin upon purpose
'cause they would go thither.
So, indeed, all
disquiet, horror,
and perturbation follows her.
- Look, he she comes.
- Will your grace
command me any service?
I will go on the slightest
errand now to the Antipodes
that you can devise
to send me on.
I will fetch you
a tooth-picker now
from the furthest inch of Asia,
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.
- Oh, God, here's
a dish I love not.
I cannot endure my Lady Tongue.
- Come, lady, come.
You have lost the
heart of Benedick.
- Indeed.
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 off me with false dice,
therefore you 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,
lest I should prove
the mother of fools.
- Why, how now, Claudio?
Wherefore are you sad?
- Not sad, Pedro.
- How, then, sick?
- Neither.
- He is neither sad, nor
sick, nor merry, nor well.
But civil.
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.
- Speak, cousin.
Or if you cannot, stop
his mouth with a kiss
and let him not speak neither.
- Speak, Claudio.
'Tis your cue.
- Silence is the
perfectest herald of joy.
I were but little happy,
if I could say how much.
As you are mine, I am yours.
I give away myself for you
and dote upon the exchange.
- Ah, in faith, lady,
you have a merry heart.
- Yea, I thank it, poor fool.
It keeps on the
windy side of care.
My cousin tells him in his
ear that he is in her heart.
- Hero,
Will you marry me?
Yes?
- 'Tis so.
Claudio shall marry the
daughter of Leonato.
- Yea, but I can cross it.
- Any bar, any cross,
any impediment will be
medicinable to me.
I am sick in displeasure to him
and whatsoever comes
athwart his affection
ranges evenly with mine.
How canst thou
cross this marriage?
- I think I told you how much
I'm in the favor of Margaret.
- I remember.
- I can, at any unseasonable
instant of the night,
appoint her to look out
of Hero's chamber window.
- What life is in that, to be
the death of this marriage?
- The poison of that
lies in you to temper.
To misuse your brother,
to vex Claudio,
undo Hero, to kill Leonato.
Look you for any other issue?
- Only to despite them,
I will endeavor anything.
- Go then.
Find me a meet hour to draw
Pedro and Claudio alone.
Tell them that you know
that Hero loves me.
Intend a kind of zeal
both to Pedro and Claudio
that you have discovered thus.
And
bring them to see this
the very night before
the intended wedding.
For in the meantime,
I will so fashion the matter
that there shall appear
such seeming truth
of Hero's disloyalty
that jealousy shall
be called assurance
and all preparation overthrown.
- Grow this to what
adverse issue it can,
I will put it in practice.
Be cunning in the working this
and thy fee is a
thousand ducats.
- Be you constant
with your accusation
and my cunning
shall not shame me.
- When are you married?
- Why, every day, tomorrow.
- Oh!
Good Lord, for alliance.
Thus goes everyone
to the world but I,
and I am sunburnt.
I may sit in a corner and
cry heigh-ho for a husband.
- Oh, 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?
- No.
Er, unless I might have
another for working days.
Your grace is too costly
to wear every day.
But I beseech you, 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 mother cried and then
there was a star danced
and under that was I born.
Cousins, God give you joy!
- By my troth, she's
a well-spirited lady.
- She mocks all her
wooers out of suit.
There is little of
the melancholy element
in her.
- I will undertake one
of Hercules' labors,
which is to bring
Benedick and Beatrice
into a mountain of affection,
the one with the other.
- Oh, Lord! If they
were but a week married,
they would talk themselves mad.
My boy, I am for you.
- Oh, and I.
- And you, too, gentle Hero?
- I will do any modest
office to help my cousin.
- I will teach you how
to humor your cousin
so that she shall fall
in love with Benedick.
And I, with you two's help,
will so practice
on Benedick that,
in despite of his quick
wit and his queasy stomach,
he shall fall in
love with Beatrice.
Go in with me.
I will tell you my drift.
- Boy!
In my room lies a racket.
Fetch it and come hither.
- I am here already.
- I know that.
But I would have you
hence and here again.
I do much wonder that one man,
seeing how much
another man is a fool
when he dedicates his
behaviors 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.
- See you where Benedick is?
- Oh, very well.
- Come, Balthasar, we'll
hear that song again.
- Oh!
Tax not so bad a
voice to slander music
any more than once.
- Oh, it is the witness
still of excellence
that he puts a strange
face to his own perfection.
- Now, divine air!
Now is his soul ravished!
- By my troth, a good song.
- And an ill singer.
- Farewell.
- Ah.
You!
- Now, Ursula, when Beatrice
doth come, my talk to thee
must be how Benedick is
sick in love with her.
- Fear you not my
part of the dialogue.
- No, truly, Ursula!
She's too disdainful.
I know her spirits
are as coy and wild
as haggerds of the rock.
Look, where Beatrice,
like a lapwing,
runs close by the ground
to hear our conference.
- Then go we near her,
that her ear lose nothing
of the false sweet bait
that we lay for it.
- Ah, come hither, Antonio!
What was it you
told me of today,
your niece Beatrice was
in love with Benedick?
- But are you sure that
Benedick loves Beatrice
so entirely?
- So says Pedro
and my new-trothed Claudio.
- Stalk on, stalk
on, the fowl sits.
I did never think that lady
would have loved any man.
- No, nor I, neither.
But most wonderful that she
should dote on Benedick,
whom she hath in all outward
behaviors seemed ever to abhor.
- Is't possible?
Sits the wind in that corner?
- Er, by my troth, I cannot
tell what to think of it
but that she loves him
with an enraged affection.
It is past the
infinite of thought.
- And did they bid
you tell her of it?
- They did entreat me
to acquaint her of it.
But I persuaded them,
if they loved Benedick,
to let 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?
- What effects of
passion shows she?
- Bait the hook
well, this fish will bite.
- What effects?
Erm, well, she will sit and, er,
well, you heard
Hero tell you how.
- Er, she did indeed.
- How?
How, pray you?
You amaze me!
I would have thought her
spirit would be invincible
against all assaults
of affection.
- She is so self-endeared.
Nature never framed
a woman's heart
of proudest 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 all matters else seem week.
She cannot love.
- He hath taken the
infection. Hold it up.
- Hath she made her
affection known to Benedick?
- No.
And swears she never will.
That's her torment.
- Ah, 'tis true, indeed.
Hero says.
"Shall I," says she, "that
have so oft encountered him
with scorn, write to
him that I love him?"
- "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."
- And then down upon
her knees she falls,
weeps, sobs, beats her
heart, tears her hair,
prays, curses, "Oh,
sweet Benedick!
"God give me patience!"
- I never yet saw man,
how wise, how rarely featured,
but she would
spell him backward.
So turns she every
man the wrong side out
and never gives to
truth and virtue
that which simpleness
and merit purchaseth.
- It were good that
Benedick knew of it
by some other, if she
will not discover it.
- But who dare tell her so?
If I should speak,
she would mock me into air.
Oh, she would laugh
me out of myself
and press me to death with wit.
- She is an excellent sweet lady
and out of all suspicion,
she's virtuous.
- And she's exceeding wise.
- In everything but
in loving Benedick.
Now, pray thee,
tell Benedick of it
and hear what he will say.
- No, rather,
I will go to Benedick
and counsel him
to fight against his passion.
And, truly, I will devise
some honest slanders
to stain my cousin with.
Therefore, let Benedick,
like covered fire,
consume away in sighs,
waste inwardly.
It were a better death
than die with mocks,
which is as bad as
die with tickling.
- Gentlemen, will you walk?
Dinner is ready.
- 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?
They say that lady is fair.
'Tis a truth,
I can bear 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 chance have
some odd quirks
and remnants of
wit broken on me,
but shall quips
and sentences and
these paper bullets of the brain
awe a man from the
career of his humor?
No, the world must be peopled.
- Stand I condemned for
pride and scorn so much?
Benedick...
Benedick, love on.
I will requite thee,
taming my wild heart
with thy loving hand.
If thou dost love my
kindness will incite thee
to bind our loves up.
For others say thou dost deserve
and I believe it better
than reportingly.
- She's limed, I warrant you.
We have caught her.
- If it proves so, then
loving goes by haps.
Some Cupid kills with
arrows, some with traps.
- Gallants, I am
not as I have been.
- So say I.
Methinks you are sadder.
- I hope he be in love.
- Oh, hang him, truant.
There isn't a true
drop of blood in him
to be truly touched with love.
If he be sad, he
wants money.
- Oh, if he be not in
love with some woman,
there's no believing old signs.
- He rubs himself with civet.
Can you smell him out by that?
- Oh that's as much as to say,
the sweet youth's in love.
- Oh, the greatest
note of it is...
Oh, is melancholy.
- And when was
he want to wash his face?
- Yea, or to paint himself?
For the which, I hear
what they say of him.
Conclude, conclude,
he is in love.
- Nay, but I know who loves him.
- That would I know, too.
I warrant, one
that knows him not.
- Yes, and his ill conditions.
And, in despite of
it all, dies for him.
- Oh, she shall be buried
with her face upwards.
- Oh!
- Oh!
- Benny!
- Hero and Ursula have by this
played their parts
with Beatrice.
- My brother.
God save you.
- Good den, brother.
- If your leisure served,
I would speak with you.
- In private?
- If it please you.
Yet, Claudio may hear.
For what I would
speak of concerns him.
- What's the matter?
- Mean you to be
married tomorrow?
- 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 manifest.
- Why?
What's the matter?
- I came hither to tell you and,
circumstances shortened,
for she has been too
long a talking of,
the lady is disloyal.
- Who, Hero?
- Even she.
Leonato's Hero.
Your Hero.
Every man's Hero.
- Disloyal?
- The word is too good to
paint out her wickedness.
I could say she were worse.
Think you of a worse title
and I will fit her to it.
Wonder not till further warrant.
Go but with me tonight,
you will see her
chamber window entered,
even the night before
her wedding day.
If you love her then,
tomorrow wed her.
- 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 anything tonight
why I should not marry her
tomorrow in the congregation,
where I should wed,
there will I shame her.
- And as I wooed for
thee to obtain her,
I will join with
thee to disgrace her.
- I will disparage
her no farther 'til
you are my witnesses.
Bear it coldly but 'til midnight
and let the issue show itself.
- Troth, I think your
other were better.
- No, pray thee, good Meg.
I'll wear this.
- Oh, by my troth,
it's not so good
and I warrant your
cousin will say so.
- My cousin's a fool,
and thou art another.
I'll wear none but this.
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, my lady?
Of speaking honorably?
Is not marriage
honorable in a beggar?
Is not your love honorable
without marriage?
If bad thinking do not
wrest true speaking,
I'll offend nobody.
Is there harm in
heavier for a husband?
None, I think,
it be the right husband
and the right wife.
Otherwise, 'tis
light and not heavy.
Ask Beatrice else, here she is.
- Sweet Hero.
- Why how now?
Do you speak with the sick tune?
- Mm.
I am out of all
other tune, methinks.
- Oh, clap into a light o' love
that goes without burden.
Do you sing it
and I'll dance it.
- Ye light of love
with your heels!
Then if your husband
have stables enough,
you'll see he shall
lack no barns.
- Oh, illegitimate construction!
I scorn that with my heels.
- 'Tis almost ten
o'clock, cousin.
'Tis time you were ready.
By my troth, I am exceeding ill.
Heigh-ho.
- For a hawk, a
horse, or a husband?
- What
means the fool, trow?
- Oh, nothing, I.
But God give everyone
their heart's desire.
- This Claudio gave me.
It is an excellent perfume.
- I am stuffed,
cousin, I cannot smell.
- A maid, and stuffed?
There's a goodly catching
of a cold.
- God help me.
God help me.
How long have you
professed apprehension?
- Ever since you lost it.
Doth not my wit
become me rarely?
- It is not seen enough.
You should wear it in your cap.
By my troth, I am sick.
- Get you some distilled
Carduus Benedictus
and lay it on your heart.
It is the only
thing for a qualm.
- There thou prickest
her with a thistle.
- Benedictus?
Why Benedictus?
You have some moral
in this Benedictus?
- Moral?
No, by my troth, I
have no moral meaning.
I meant plain holy-thistle.
You may perchance think
that I think you're in love.
Nay, by'r lady, I am no such
fool to think what I list,
that you will be in love
or that you are in love
or that you can be in love.
Yet, Benedick was
such another and
now, in despite of his heart,
he eats his meat
without grudging.
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!
- Better, better!
Faster!
Are you men?
Heels up, Seacole.
Knees up, Verges.
That bum's out again, Otecake!
Are you good men and true?
- Yeah!
- Yeah!
- Or else it were pity but
we should suffer salvation,
body and soul!
- Nay, that were a
punishment too good for you,
if you should have
any allegiance in you.
First, who think you
the most desartless man
to be constable?
- Hugh Otecake, sir,
or George Seacole.
For they can write and read.
- Come hither, neighbor Seacole.
God hath blessed you
with a good name.
You are thought here to be
the most senseless and fit man
for the constable of the watch.
Therefore, bear you the lantern.
This is your charge.
You are to comprehend
all vagrom men.
You are to bid those that are
not drunk, get them to bed.
- How, if they will not?
- Why, then, let them alone
'til they are drunk.
If they make not then
the better answer,
you may say they are not
the men you took them for.
Well, masters, goodnight.
- Well, masters,
we hear our charge.
- Oh, Hero!
Hero!
- Claudio?
- What Conrade!
Conrade, I say!
- Forward with thy tale.
- I will, like a true drunkard,
utter all to thee.
Know that I have earned of John
a thousand ducats.
That I have tonight wooed
Margaret, by the name of Hero.
She leans me out of
Hero's chamber window
and bids me a thousand
times goodnight.
I tell this tale too vilely.
- Some treason.
- Shh!
- Didst thou hear somebody?
- No.
'Twas the vane on the house.
- Hm.
I should first tell thee
how Pedro, Claudio, and John
planted, placed, and
possessed by John,
saw afar off in the
orchard this, er,
amiable encounter.
- And thought they
Margaret was Hero?
- Two of them did.
Pedro and Claudio.
The devil John knew
it was Margaret.
And, partly by his oaths,
which first possessed them,
and partly by the dark night,
which did deceive them,
but chiefly by my villainy,
which confirmed any
slander John had made,
away Claudio went
enraged.
- We charge you, in the
captain's name, stand!
Call up Dogberry!
We have here recovered the
most dangerous piece of lechery
that ever was known
in the commonwealth!
- Masters--
- Never speak!
We charge you, go with us!
- We are like to prove a
goodly commodity.
- Commodity in
question, I warrant you.
Come, we'll obey you.
- Oh God's, my life!
Come.
Let them be opinioned.
Let the watch come forth!
- What would you with
me, honest neighbor?
- Marry, sir, I 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?
- Goodman Verges, sir, speaks
a little off the matter.
A young man, sir, and his
wits are not so blunt as,
God help, I would
desire they were.
- Neighbors, you are tedious.
- Oh.
If it should please
your worship to say so.
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, and 'twere a thousand
pound more than 'tis.
- And so would I.
- I would fain
know what you have to say.
- Marry, sir, our watch tonight,
excepting your
worship's presence,
ha' taken a couple of--
- A good young man,
sir, he will be talking.
As they say, when the ale
is in, the wit is out.
Well said, in faith,
neighbor Verges.
Well, God's a good man and
two men ride of a horse,
one must ride behind.
- Leonato!
They stay for you to give
your daughter to her husband.
- I must leave.
- It shall be
suffigance.
- Leonato.
- I'll wait
upon them. I am ready.
- You come hither
to marry this lady.
- No.
- Ah!
Er, to be married to her.
Friar, you've come to marry her.
- Lady, you come hither
to be married to this man.
- I do.
- 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 love.
- Know you any, Claudio?
- Stand thee by, Friar.
Father, by your leave,
would you with free
and unconstrained soul
give me this maid,
your daughter?
- As freely, son, as
God did give her me.
- What have I to give you back,
whose worth may counterpoise
this rich and precious gift?
- Nothing, unless
you render her again.
- Sweet Pedro, 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 honor.
Behold, how like a
maid she blushes here.
Oh, 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.
That blush is
guiltiness, not modesty.
- What do you mean?
- Not to be married.
Not to knit my soul
to an approved wanton.
- My Lord, er...
If you, in your own proof,
have vanquished the
resistance of her youth,
and made defeat
of her virginity--
- No, I know what you would say.
If I had known
her, you would say
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
showed bashful sincerity
and comely love.
- Seemed I ever
otherwise to you?
- Oh, out on thee!
Seeming!
I will write against it.
You seem to me as
Dian in her orb.
But you are more intemperate
in your blood than Venus,
or those pampered animals that
rage in savage sensuality.
- Is my love well, that
he doth speak so wide?
- Sweet Pedro,
why speak not you?
- What shall I speak?
I stand dishonored,
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.
- True?
Oh, God.
- Leonato, stand I here?
Is this face Hero's?
Are our eyes our own?
- All this is so.
But what of this?
- Oh God, defend me.
How am I beset!
What kind of catechizing
call you this?
- To make your answer
truly to your name.
- Is it not Hero?
Who can blot that name
with any just reproach?
- Marry, that can Hero.
Hero itself can blot
out Hero's virtue.
What man was he talked
with you yesternight?
Out at your window
betwixt twelve and one?
Now, if you are
maid, answer to this.
- I talked with no man
at that hour, Claudio.
- Why, then you are no maiden.
Leonato, I am sorry
that you must hear.
Upon mine honor,
myself, my brother,
and this grieved
man did see her,
hear her, at that
hour last night
talk to a ruffian at
her chamber window
who hath indeed, like a
liberal villain, confessed
the vile encounters
that they have had
a thousand times in secret.
- Fie, fie!
They're not to be named,
not to be spoke of.
There is not chastity
enough in language
without offense to utter them.
Thus, pretty lady,
I am sorry for thy
much misgovernment.
- Oh, Hero.
Fare the well.
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.
- Come.
Let us go.
These things come thus to light,
smother her spirits up.
- Hath no man's dagger
here a point for me?
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.
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.
Chid I for that at
frugal nature's frame.
One too much by thee.
Why had I one?
Why ever wast thou
lovely in my eyes?
Oh, she...
She is fallen into a pit of ink
that the wide sea
hath drops too few
to wash her clean again
and salts too little
which may season give
her foul-tainted flesh!
- Sir.
- On my soul, my
cousin is belied.
- Lady, were you her
bedfellow this last night?
- No.
Truly not.
Although, until last night,
I have this four weeks
been her bedfellow.
- Confirmed!
Confirmed!
Would the two brothers lie?
And Claudio lie,
who loved her so that,
speaking of her foulness,
washed it with tears?
Hence from her!
Let her die.
- Lady, what man is he
that you're accused of?
- They know that do accuse me.
I know none.
My father, prove you that
any man with me conversed
at hours unmeet
or that I yesternight
maintained the change of words
with any creature.
Refuse me, hate me,
torture me to death.
- Hear you--
- We have some haste, Leonato.
- Ah, some haste!
Well, fare you well!
Are you hasty now?
Huh?
Well, all is one.
- Nay, do not quarrel
with us, old man.
- Oh!
- If he could right
himself with quarreling,
some of us would lie low.
- Who wrongs him?
- Marry, thou dost wrong
me, thou dissembler, thou.
- Come, follow me, boy.
Come, sir.
Boy, come, follow me.
Sir boy, I'll whip you
from your foining fence!
Nay, as I am a
gentleman, I will.
- Brother Anthony--
- 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 anticly and show
outward hideousness
and speak of half a
dozen dangerous words,
how the may 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.
- She is dead, I think.
Hero?
- Hero?
- Hero?
Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
Hero!
Hero!
Hero!
- Hear me a little.
For I have only
been silent so long
and gave way unto this
course of fortune by
noting of the lady.
I did mark a thousand
blushing apparitions
to start into her face,
a thousand innocent
shames in angel whiteness
beat away those blushes
and in her eye there
hath appeared a fire
to burn the errors
that these boys 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 reverence,
calling, nor divinity,
if this sweet lady
lie not guiltless
under some biting error.
- I know not.
My soul doth tell
me Hero is belied.
- Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
He--
- if you go on thus,
you will kill yourself.
And it is 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.
Men can counsel and speak
comfort to that grief
which they themselves not feel.
But tasting it,
their counsel turn to passion,
which before would give
preceptial medicine to rage.
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.
Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
- Hero!
Why art thou, cousin?
Cousin!
Get help!
Help!
Uncle!
Benedick, Friar!
- Beatrice.
Have you wept all this while?
- Yeah, 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.
- 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.
- I do
love nothing in this world
so well as you.
Is that not 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.
- By my hand, Beatrice,
thou lovest me.
- Do not swear and eat it.
- I will swear that you love me
and make him eat it that
says I love not you.
- Will you not eat your words?
- With no sauce that can be
devised. I protest I love thee.
- Why, then...
Oh, God forgive me.
- What offense, sweet Beatrice?
- You've stayed me
in a happy hour.
I was about to
protest I loved you.
- And do so.
With all your heart.
- I love you with so
much of my heart that
none is left to protest.
- Come, bid me do
anything for thee.
- Kill Claudio.
- Not for
the wide world.
You know much of
inwardness and love is
unto Claudio and Pedro.
- You
kill me to deny it.
Farewell.
- Tarry,
sweet Beatrice.
- I am gone, though I am here.
There is no love in you.
Nay, I pray you, let me go.
- Beatrice.
Beatrice--
- In faith, I will go.
- We'll be friends first.
- You dare easier
be friends with me
than to fight with mine enemy.
- Is Claudio thine enemy?
- Is he not approved in
the height a villain,
that hath slandered, scorned,
dishonored my kinswoman?
That I were a man.
What, bear her in hand until
they come to take hands
and then, with public
accusation, uncovered slander,
unmitigated rancor, God,
that I were a man, I would,
I would eat his heart
in the marketplace!
- Hear me.
Beatrice.
- What? Talk with
a man out a window!
A proper saying.
- Nay, but Beatrice--
- Sweet Hero, she is wronged!
She is slandered.
She is undone.
- Beatrice.
- 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,
valor into compliments,
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 it.
I cannot be a man with wishing.
Therefore I will die
a woman with grieving.
- Tarry, Beatrice.
By this hand, I love thee.
- Then use it for my love
some other way than
swearing by it.
- Think you in your soul
Claudio hath wronged Hero?
- Yea.
As sure as I have a
thought or a soul.
- Enough, I am engaged.
I will challenge him.
Go, comfort your cousin.
- What how now, Cousin Hero.
- Come, lady, pause a while
and let my counsel
sway you in this case.
Your daughter, here,
the boys 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.
But not for that dream I
on this strange course,
but on this travail
look for greater birth.
But she dying, as it
must so be maintained,
upon the instant
she was accused,
shall be lamented, pitied,
and excused of every hearer.
So will it fair 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 appareled
in more precious habit,
more moving, delicate
and full of life
into the eye and
prospect of his soul
than when she lived indeed.
Er, and then shall he mourn,
if ever love had
interest in his liver,
and wish he did
not so accuse her,
no, though, he thought
his accusation true.
Let this be so
and doubt not but success
will fashion the event
in better shape than I can
lay it down in likelihood.
- 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 prolonged.
Have patience and endure.
- See, see, here comes
the man we went to seek.
- Ah!
Now, Benedick, what news?
- Good day.
- Oh, we have been up
and down to see thee,
for we are high-proof melancholy
and would fain have
it be beaten away.
Will thou use thy wit?
- It's in my scabbard.
Shall I draw it?
- As I am an honest
man, he looks pale.
Are thou sick, or angry?
- I pray you choose
another subject.
- I think he is angry indeed.
- Aye, if he be, he knows
how to turn his girdle.
- Shall I speak a
word in your ear?
- Oh, God bless me
from a challenge.
- You are a villain.
I jest not.
I shall make it good how you
dare, with what you dare,
and when you dare.
Do me right,
or I shall protest
your cowardice.
- I will tell thee how Beatrice
praised thy wit the other day.
I said thou had a fine wit.
"True," said she, "a fine
little one."
"No," said I, "a great wit."
"Right," say she,
"a great gross one."
"Oh, nay," said I, "a good wit."
"Just," she said,
"for it hurt nobody."
- For the wit she wept heartily
and said she cared not.
- Yea, that she did
and but for that, if she
did not hate him deadly,
she would love him dearly.
The old man's
daughter told us all.
But when shall we set
the savage bull's horn
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 leave you now to
your gossip-like humor.
You break jests like
braggarts do their blades,
which God be thanked, hurt not.
For your many courtesies,
I thank you.
I must discontinue your company.
Your brother the
bastard is fled.
As for my Lord Lackbeard
there, here and I shall meet.
And 'til then,
peace be with him.
- He is in earnest.
- In most profound earnest.
- But soft, let me be.
Pluck up, my heart, and be sad.
Did he not say my
brother was fled?
Oh, no.
Come on.
- Claudio!
To thy head, thou
hast so wronged mine
innocent child and me
that I am forced to
lay my reverence by
and with gray hairs and
bruise of many days,
do challenge thee
to trial of a man.
I say thou hast belied
mine innocent child.
Thy slander have gone through
and through her heart,
and she lies buried
with her ancestors.
Oh, in a tomb where
never scandal slept,
save this of hers,
framed by thy villainy!
- My villainy?
- Thine, Claudio!
Thine, I say!
- You say not right, old man.
- I'll prove it on
his body, if he dare,
Despite his nice fence
and active practice,
his May of youth and
bloom of lustihood.
Thou hast killed 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.
God knows I loved my niece
and she is dead,
slandered 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!
- Gentlemen, both,
we will not wake your patience.
My heart is sorry for
your daughter's death.
But, on my honor, she
was charged with nothing
but what was true--
- But
Pedro, oh, Pedro!
- And very full of proof!
- Pedro, I--
- I will not hear you!
- Oh, no?
Come, brother, away.
I will be heard!
- And shall.
Or some of us will smart for it.
- Masters, it is proved already
that you are thought
to be little better
than false knaves!
And it will go near to
be thought so shortly.
How answer you for yourselves?
- How now?
Two of my brother's men bound.
Borachio is one.
- Harken after their offense.
- Yeah.
- Come you hither, sirrah.
A word in your ear, sir.
I say to you,
it is thought you
are false knaves.
- You are an ass!
- Dost thou not
suspect my place?
- What offense have
these men done?
- Marry, sir, they have
committed false report.
Moreover, they have
spoken untruths.
Secondarily, they are slanders.
Sixth--
- Thirdly.
- And lastly, they
have belied a lady.
Thirdly--
- Sixth.
- They are verified,
unjust things and--
- To conclude.
- To conclude, they
are lying knaves.
- First, I ask thee
what they have done.
Thirdly, I ask what
is their offense.
Sixth, and lastly, why
they are committed.
Oh, and to conclude, what
you lay to their charge.
Who have you offended, masters,
that you are thus
bound to your answer?
- Hear me and let
Claudio kill me.
I have deceived
even your very eyes,
what your wisdom
could not discover,
these shallow fools
have brought to light.
Who, in the night, overheard
me confessing to this man
how John your brother
incensed me to slander Hero,
how you were brought
into the orchard
and saw me court Margaret
in Hero's garments.
How you disgraced her
when you should marry her.
The lady is dead upon mine
and John's false accusation.
And, briefly, I desire nothing
but the reward of a villain.
- Runs not this speech like
iron through your blood?
- I have drank poison
whiles he uttered it.
- But did my brother
set you onto this?
- Yea.
And paid me richly for
the practice of it.
- He is composed and
framed of treachery.
- Balthazar hath reformed
Leonato of the matter.
And, masters, do not
forget to specify
that this plaintiff here,
the offender, did call me ass.
I beseech you.
Let it be remembered
in his punishment!
- The god
of love, who sits above
and knows me.
Knows me.
Sweet Beatrice.
Wouldst thou come
when I called thee?
- Yea, Benedick, and
depart when you bid me.
- Stay but 'til then.
- Then is spoken.
Fare you well now.
Yet, ere I go,
let me go with that I came,
which is knowing what hath
passed between you and Claudio.
- Only foul words.
And thereupon, will I kiss thee?
- Foul words is but foul wind.
Foul wind is but foul breath.
And foul breath is noisome.
Therefore, I will
depart unkissed.
- Thou hast frightened the
word right out of his sense,
so forcible is thy wit.
But I will tell thee plainly,
Claudio undergoes my challenge.
I must shortly hear from him,
or subscribe him a coward.
Now, I pray thee,
tell me for which
of my bad parts
did thou first fall
in love with me?
- For them all together,
which maintained so
politic a state of evil
that they will not
admit any good parts
to intermingle with them.
But for which of my good parts
did you first
suffer love for me?
- Suffer love!
A good epithet.
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 will 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
20 that will praise himself.
- An old, an old
instance, Beatrice,
that lived in the time
of good neighbors.
If a man does not erect
in this age his own tomb
ere he dies, he will live
no longer in monument
than the bell rings
and the widow weeps.
But so much for
praising myself, who,
I myself will bear
witness, is praiseworthy.
Now, tell me, how
doth your cousin?
- Very ill.
- And how do you?
- Very ill, too.
- Serve God,
love me and mend.
- Madame!
You must come to your uncle.
Yonder's old coil at home.
It is been proved my lady Hero
hath been falsely accused,
Pedro and Claudio
mightily abused,
and John is the author of all,
who is fled and gone.
Will you come?
Presently.
- Will you go hear this news?
- I will live in thy heart,
die in thy lap,
and be buried in thy eyes.
And moreover, I will go
with thee to your uncle's.
- I know not how to pray your
patience, yet I must speak.
- I thank you for
my daughter's death.
Record it with your
high and worthy deeds.
'Twas bravely done, if
you bethink you of it.
- Choose to revenge yourself.
Impose me to what penance
your invention can
lay upon my sin.
- I cannot bid you
bid my daughter live.
That were impossible.
But I pray you both,
possess the people here
how innocent she died.
And if your love can labor
ought in sad invention--
- Tomorrow morning,
come you to the house.
Er, for since you could
not be his son-in-law,
be yet his nephew.
Antonio hath a daughter,
almost a copy of his child.
That's dead.
Give her the right you should
have given her cousin--
- And so dies my revenge.
- Oh, noble, sir,
your over-kindness doth
wring tears from me.
I do embrace your offer.
- Tomorrow, then, I
will expect your coming.
Tonight I take my leave.
- Farewell, boys.
We look for you tomorrow.
- We will not fail you.
- Until tomorrow
morning, farewell.
- Good morrow, Claudio.
Are you yet determined today
to marry with my
brother's daughter?
- I'll hold my mind.
- Ready?
Call her forth, brother.
- 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.
Tush, fear not, man.
We'll tip thy horns with gold.
- Some such strange bull
lept 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 come other reckonings
Which lady is this?
Sweet, let me see your face.
- Er, no, that you shall not,
'til you take her hand before me
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.
- A former Hero.
The Hero that is dead.
- One Hero died
defiled, but I do live.
And surely as I live,
I am a maid.
- All this amazement
can I qualify.
Erm, when after the
holy rites are ended.
I'll tell you largely
of fair Hero's "death."
Er, which is Beatrice?
- I answer to that name.
What is your will?
- Do
not you love me?
- Why, no.
No more than reason.
- Why, then your uncle,
Pedro, and Claudio
are deceived, for
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.
- Oh, come, cousin, I'm
sure you love the gentleman.
- And I'll be sworn upon
it that he loves her.
For here's a paper,
written in his hand.
A halting sonnet of
his own pure brain,
fashioned to Beatrice.
- And here's another,
writ in my cousin's hand,
stolen from her pocket,
containing her
affection unto Benedick.
- 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 you
were in a consumption.
- Peace.
I will stop your mouth.
- How dost thou, Benedick?
The savage bull?
- I'll tell thee what, Pedro.
A college of wit-crackers
cannot flout me out of my humor.
Dost thou think I care for
a satire or an epigram?
No.
Never flout at me for what
I've said against love.
For man is a giddy
thing and this
is my conclusion.
Come, come, we are friends.
Let's have a dance!
- Hey nonny, nonny!