BENEDICK
Pray , sweet Mistress Margaret, deserve well at my hands by helping me to the speech of Beatrice.
MARGARET
Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?
BENEDICK
In so high a style, Margaret, that no man living shall come over it; for, in most comely truth, deservest it.
MARGARET
To have no man come over me! why, shall I always keep below stairs?
BENEDICK
wit is as quick as the greyhound’s mouth; it catches.
MARGARET
And yours as blunt as the fencer’s foils, which hit, but hurt not.
BENEDICK
A most manly wit, Margaret; it will not hurt a woman: and so, I pray , call Beatrice. I give the bucklers.
MARGARET
Give us the swords, we have bucklers of our own.
BENEDICK
If you use them, Margaret, you must put in the pikes with a vice; and they are dangerous weapons for maids.
MARGARET
Well, I will call Beatrice to you, who I think legs.
BENEDICK
And therefore will come.
BENEDICK
The god of love,
That sits above,
And knows me, and knows me,
How pitiful I deserve,—
BENEDICK
I mean, in singing: but in loving, Leander the good swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole book full of these quondam carpet-mongers, whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse, why, they were never so truly turned over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I cannot show it in rime; I have tried: I can find out no rime to ‘lady’ but ‘baby’, an innocent rime; for ‘scorn,’ ‘horn’, a hard rime; for ‘school’, ‘fool’, a babbling rime; very ominous endings: no, I was not born under a riming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.
BENEDICK
Sweet Beatrice, come when I called ?
BEATRICE
Yea, signior; and depart when you bid me.
BENEDICK
O, stay but till then!
BEATRICE
‘Then’ is spoken; fare you well now: and yet, I go, let me go with that I came for; which is, with knowing what passed between you and Claudio.
BENEDICK
Only foul words; and thereupon I will kiss .
BEATRICE
Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.
BENEDICK
frighted the word out of his right sense, so forcible is wit. But I must tell plainly, Claudio undergoes my challenge, and either I must shortly hear from him, or I will subscribe him a coward. And, I pray now, tell me, for which of my bad parts first fall in love with me?
BEATRICE
For them all together; which maintained so politic a state of evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love for me?
BENEDICK
‘Suffer love,’ a good epithet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love against my will.
BEATRICE
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.
BENEDICK
and I are too wise to woo peaceably.
BEATRICE
It appears not in this confession: there’s not one wise man among twenty that will praise himself.
BENEDICK
An old, an old instance, Beatrice, that lived in the time of good neighbours. If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the widow weeps.
BEATRICE
And how long is that think you?
BENEDICK
Question: why, an hour in clamour and a quarter in rheum: therefore is it most expedient for the wise,—if Don Worm, his conscience, find no impediment to the contrary,—to be the trumpet of his own virtues, as I am to myself. So much for praising myself, who, I myself will bear witness, is praiseworthy. And now tell me, how your cousin?
BEATRICE
Very ill.
BENEDICK
And how do you?
BEATRICE
Very ill too.
BENEDICK
Serve God, love me, and mend. There will I leave you too, for here comes one in haste.
URSULA
Madam, you must come to your uncle. Yonder’s old coil at home: it is proved, my Lady Hero been falsely accused, the Prince and Claudio mightily abused; and Don John is the author of all, who is fled and gone. Will you come ?
BEATRICE
Will you go hear this news, signior?
BENEDICK
I will live in heart, die in lap, and be buried in eyes; and moreover I will go with to uncle’s.