Much Ado About Nothing Lines - Leonato

[ACT 1: SCENE 1] Cue: Enter

I learn in this letter that Don

Pedro of Aragon comes this night to Messina.

Cue: MESSENGER: He is very near by this. He was not three leagues off when I left him.

How many gentlemen have you lost in this

action?

Cue: MESSENGER: But few of any sort, and none of name.

A victory is twice itself when the achiever

brings home full numbers. I find here that Don

Pedro hath bestowed much honor on a young

Florentine called Claudio.

Cue: MESSENGER: Much deserved on his part, and equally remembered by Don Pedro. He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion. He hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how.

He hath an uncle here in Messina will be

very much glad of it.

Cue: MESSENGER: I have already delivered him letters, and there appears much joy in him, even so much that joy could not show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness.

Did he break out into tears?

Cue: MESSENGER: In great measure.

A kind overflow of kindness. There are no

faces truer than those that are so washed.

How much better is it to weep at joy than to

joy at weeping!

Cue: MESSENGER: I know none of that name, lady. There was none such in the army of any sort.

What is he that you ask for, niece?

Cue: BEATRICE: He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged Cupid at the flight, and my uncle’s Fool, reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid and challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed? For indeed I promised to eat all of his killing.

Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too

much, but he’ll be meet with you, I doubt it not.

Cue: BEATRICE: It is so indeed. He is no less than a stuffed man, but for the stuffing—well, we are all mortal.

You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is

a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and

her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit

between them.

Cue: MESSENGER: I will hold friends with you, lady.

BEATRICE: Do, good friend.

You will never run mad, niece.

Cue: PRINCE: Good Signior Leonato, are you 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 the

likeness of your Grace, for trouble being gone,

comfort should remain, but when you depart from

me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave.

Cue: PRINCE: You embrace your charge too willingly. I think this is your daughter.

Her mother hath many times told me so.

Cue: BENEDICK: Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her?

Signior Benedick, no, for then were you a

child.

Cue: PRINCE: That is the sum of all, Leonato—Signior Claudio and Signior Benedick, my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all. I tell him we shall stay here at the least a month, and he heartily prays some occasion may detain us longer. I dare swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart.

If you swear, my lord, you shall not be

forsworn. [To Don John] Let me bid you welcome,

my lord, being reconciled to the Prince your brother,

I owe you all duty.

Cue: DON JOHN: I thank you. I am not of many words, but I thank you.

Please it your Grace lead on?

[ACT 1: SCENE 2] Cue: Enter

How now, brother, where is my cousin, your

son? Hath he provided this music?

Cue: LEONATO’s BROTHER: He is very busy about it. But, brother, I can tell you strange news that you yet dreamt not of.

Are they good?

Cue: LEONATO’s BROTHER: As the events stamps them, but they have a good cover; they show well outward. The Prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in mine orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine: the Prince discovered to Claudio that he loved my niece your daughter and meant to acknowledge it this night in a dance, and if he found her accordant, he meant to take the present time by the top and instantly break with you of it.

Hath the fellow any wit that told you this?

Cue: LEONATO’s BROTHER: A good sharp fellow. I will send for him, and question him yourself.

No, no, we will hold it as a dream till it

appear itself. But I will acquaint my daughter

withal, that she may be the better prepared for an

answer, if peradventure this be true. Go you and tell

her of it.

[They exit.]

[ACT 2: SCENE 1] Cue: Enter

Was not Count John here at supper?

Cue: BEATRICE: 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.

Then half Signior Benedick’s tongue in

Count John’s mouth, and half Count John’s melancholy

in Signior Benedick’s face—

Cue: BEATRICE: With a good leg and a good foot, uncle, and money enough in his purse, such a man would win any woman in the world if he could get her goodwill.

By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a

husband if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.

Cue: LEONATO’S BROTHER: Too curst is more than curst. I shall lessen God’s sending that way, for it is said “God sends a curst cow short horns,” but to a cow too curst, he sends none.

So, by being too curst, God will send you no

horns.

Cue: BEATRICE: Just, if He 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.

Cue: BEATRICE: What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and 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 bearherd, and lead his apes into hell.

Well then, go you into hell?

Cue: BEATRICE: 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, or else make another curtsy and say “Father, as it please me.”

Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted

with a husband.

Cue: BEATRICE: Not till God make men of some other metal than earth.

Daughter, remember what I told

you. If the Prince do solicit you in that kind, you

know your answer.

The revelers are entering, brother. Make

good room

Cue: PRINCE: I’ faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true, though I’ll be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is false.—Here, Claudio, I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won. I have broke with her father and his goodwill obtained. Name the day of marriage, and God give thee joy.

Count, take of me my daughter, and with her

my fortunes. His Grace hath made the match, and

all grace say “Amen” to it.

Cue: BEATRICE: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried, but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.—Cousins, God give you joy!

Niece, will you look to those things I told

you of?

Cue: PRINCE: By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.

There’s little of the melancholy element in

her, my lord. She is never sad but when she sleeps,

and not ever sad then, for I have heard my daughter

say she hath often dreamt of unhappiness and

waked herself with laughing.

Cue: PRINCE: She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.

O, by no means. She mocks all her wooers

out of suit.

Cue: PRINCE: She were an excellent wife for Benedick.

O Lord, my lord, if they were but a week

married, they would talk themselves mad.

Cue: CLAUDIO: Tomorrow, my lord. Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites.

Not till Monday, my dear son, which is hence

a just sevennight, and a time too brief, too, to have

all things answer my mind.

Cue: PRINCE: Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing, but I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall not go dully by us. I will in the interim undertake one of Hercules’ labors, which is to bring Signior Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection, th’ one with th’ other. I would fain have it a match, and I doubt not but to fashion it, if you three will but minister such assistance as I shall give you direction.

My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten

nights’ watchings.

[ACT 2: SCENE 3] Cue: CLAUDIO: O, ay. Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits.—I did never think that lady would have loved any mad.

No, nor I neither, but most wonderful that

she should so dote on Signior Benedick, whom she

hath in all outward behaviors seemed ever to

abhor.

Cue: BENEDICK: Is ’t possible? Sits the wind in that corner?

By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to

think of it, but that she loves him with an enraged

affection, it is past the infinite of thought.

Cue: PRINCE: Maybe she doth but counterfeit.

CLAUDIO: Faith, like enough.

O God! Counterfeit? There was never counterfeit

of passion came so near the life of passion as

she discovers it.

Cue: CLAUDIO: [aside to Leonato] Bait the hook well; this fish will bite.

What effects, my lord? She will sit you—you

heard my daughter tell you how.

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

I would have sworn it had, my lord, especially

against Benedick.

Cue: PRINCE: Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?

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

torment.

Cue: CLAUDIO: ’Tis true indeed, so your daughter says. “Shall I,” says she, “that have so oft encountered him with scorn, write to him that I love him?”

This says she now when she is beginning to

write to him, for she’ll be up twenty times a night,

and there will she sit in her smock till she have writ

a sheet of paper. My daughter tells us all.

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

O, when she had writ it and was reading it

over, she found “Benedick” and “Beatrice” between

the sheet?

Cue: CLAUDIO: That.

O, she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence,

railed at herself that she should be so

immodest to write to one that she knew would flout

her. “I measure him,” says she, “by my own spirit,

for I should flout him if he writ to me, yea, though I

love him, I should.”

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

She doth indeed, my daughter says so, and

the ecstasy hath so much overborne her that my

daughter is sometimes afeared she will do a desperate

outrage to herself. It is very true.

Cue: PRINCE: Well, we will hear further of it by your daughter. Let it cool the while. I love Benedick well, and I could wish he would modestly examine himself to see how much he is unworthy so good a lady.

My lord, will you walk? Dinner is ready.

[ACT 3: SCENE 2] Cue: BENEDICK: Gallants, I am not as I have been.

So say I. Methinks you are sadder.

Cue: PRINCE: What, sigh for the toothache?

Where is but a humor or a worm.

[ACT 3: SCENE 5] Cue: Enter

What would you with me, honest neighbor?

Cue: DOGBERRY: Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you that decerns you nearly.

Brief, I pray you, for you see it is a busy time

with me

Cue: DOGBERRY: Marry, this it is, sir

VERGES: Yes, in truth, it is, sir.

What is it, my good friends?

Cue: DOGBERRY: Comparisons are odorous. Palabras, neighbor Verges.

Neighbors, you are tedious.

Cue: DOGBERRY: It pleases your Worship to say so, but we are the poor duke’s officers. But truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all of your Worship.

All thy tediousness on me, ah?

Cue: DOGBERRY: Yea, an ’twere a thousand pound more than ’tis, for I hear as good exclamation on your Worship as of any man in the city, and though I be but a poor man, I am glad to hear it.

VERGES: And so am I.

I would fain know what you have to say.

Cue: DOGBERRY: A good old man, sir. He will be talking. As they say, “When the age is in, the wit is out.” God help us, it is a world to see!—Well said, i’ faith, neighbor Verges.—Well, God’s a good man. An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind. An honest soul, i’ faith, sir, by my troth he is, as ever broke bread, but God is to be worshiped, all men are not alike, alas, good neighbor.

Indeed neighbor, he comes too short of you.

Cue: DOGBERRY: Gifts that God gives.

I must leave you.

Cue: DOGBERRY: One word, sir. Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two aspicious persons, and we would have them this morning examined before your Worship.

Take their examination yourself and bring it

me. I am now in great haste, as it may appear unto

you.

Cue: It shall be be suffigance.

Drink some wine ere you go. Fare you well.

Cue: MESSENGER: My lord, they stay for you to give your daughter to her husband.

I’ll wait upon them. I am ready. [He exits]

[ACT 4: SCENE 1] Cue: Enter

Come, Friar Francis, be brief, only to the

plain form of marriage, and you shall recount their

particular duties afterwards.

Cue: FRIAR: You come hither, my lord, to marry this lady?

CLAUDIO: No.

To be married to her.—Friar, you come to

marry her.

Cue: HERO: None, my lord.

FRIAR: Know you any, count?

I dare make his answer, none.

Cue: CLAUDIO: Stand thee by, friar.—Father, by your leave, Will you with free and unconstrainèd soul Give me this maid, your daughter?

As freely, son, as God did give her me.

Cue: CLAUDIO: …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. Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.

What do you mean, my lord?

Cue: CLAUDIO: Not to be married, Not to knit my soul to an approvèd wanton.

Dear my lord, if you in your own proof

Have vanquished the resistance of her youth,

And made defeat of her virginity—

Cue: CLAUDIO: Out on thee, seeming! I will write against it. You seem to me as Dian in her orb, As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown. But you are more intemperate in your blood Than Venus, or those pampered animals That rage in savage sensuality.

HERO: Is my lord well that he doth speak so wide?

Sweet prince, why speak not you?

Cue: What should 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?

Cue: CLAUDIO: Leonato, stand I here? Is this the Prince? Is this the Prince’s brother? Is this face Hero’s? Are our eyes our own?

All this is so, but what of this, my lord?

Cue: CLAUDIO: Let me but move one question to your daughter, And by that fatherly and kindly power That you have in her, bid her answer truly.

I charge thee do so as thou art my child.

Cue: CLAUDIO: …But fare thee well, most foul, most fair. Farewell, Thou pure impiety and impious purity. 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.

Hath no man’s dagger here a point for me?

Cue: BEATRICE: Dead, I think.—Help, uncle!— Hero, why Hero! Uncle! Signior Benedick! Friar!

O Fate, take not away thy heavy hand!

Death is the fairest cover for her shame

That may be wished for.

Cue: BEATRICE: How now, cousin Hero

FRIAR: Have comfort, lady.

Dost thou look up?

Cue: FRIAR: Yea, wherefore should she not?

Wherefore? 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, do not ope thine eyes,

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?

O, one too much by thee! Why had I one?

Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes?

Why had I not with charitable hand

Took up a beggar’s issue at my gates,

Who, smirchèd thus, and mired with infamy,

I might have said “No part of it is mine;

This shame derives itself from unknown loins”?

But mine, and mine I loved, and mine I praised,

And mine that I was proud on, mine so much

That I myself was to myself not mine,

Valuing of her—why she, O she, is fall’n

Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea

Hath drops too few to wash her clean again,

And salt too little which may season give

To her foul tainted flesh!

Cue: BEATRICE: No, truly not, although until last night I have this twelvemonth been her bedfellow.

Confirmed, confirmed! O, that is stronger made

Which was before barred up with ribs of iron!

Would the two princes lie and Claudio lie,

Who loved her so that, speaking of her foulness,

Washed it with tears? Hence from her. Let her die!

Cue: BENEDICK: Two of them have the very bent of honor, And if their wisdoms be misled in this, The practice of it lives in John the Bastard, Whose spirits toil in frame of villainies.

I know not. If they speak but truth of her,

These hands shall tear her.

Cue: FRIR: Pause awhile, And let my counsel sway you in this case. Your daughter here the princes 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?

Cue: BENEDICK: Signior Leonato, let the Friar advise you. And though you know my inwardness and love Is very much unto the Prince and Claudio, Yet, by mine honor, I will deal in this As secretly and justly as your soul Should with your body.

Being that I flow in grief,

The smallest twine may lead me.

[ACT 5: SCENE 1] Cue: LEONATO’S BROTHER: If you go on thus, you will kill yourself, And ’tis not wisdom thus to second grief Against yourself.

I pray thee, cease thy counsel,

Which falls into mine east as profitless

As water in a sieve.

Cue: LEONATO’s BROTHER: Therein do men from children nothing differ.

I pray thee, peace. I will be flesh and blood,

For there was never yet philosopher

That could endure the toothache patiently,

However they have writ the style of gods

And made a push at chance and sufferance.

Cue: LEONATO’s BROTHER: Yet bend not all the harm upon yourself. Make those that do offend you suffer too.

There thou speak’st reason. Nay, I will do so.

My soul doth tell me Hero is belied,

And that shall Claudio know; so shall the Prince

And all of them that thus dishonor her.

Cue: PRINCE: Good e’en, good e’en.

CLAUDIO: Good day to both of you.

Hear you, my lords—

Cue: PRINCE: We have some haste, Leonato.

Some haste, my lord! Well, fare you well, my lord.

Are you so hasty now? Well, all is one.

Cue: LEONATO’S BROTHER: If he could right himself with quarrelling, Some of us would lie low.

CLAUDIO: Who wrongs him?

Marry, thou dost wrong me, thou dissembler, thou.

Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword.

I fear thee not.

CLAUDIO: Marry, beshrew my hand If it should give your age such cause of fear. In faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword.

Tush, tush, man, never fleer and jest at me.

I speak not like a dotard nor a fool,

As under privilege of age to brag

What I have done being young, or what would do

Were I not old. Know, 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 hath gone through and through her

heart,

And she lies buried with her ancestors,

O, in a tomb where never scandal slept,

Save this of hers, framed by thy villainy.

Cue: CLAUDIO: My villainy?

Thine, Claudio, thine, I say.

Cue: You say not right, old man.

My lord, my lord,

I’ll prove it on his body if he dare,

Despite his nice fence and his active practice,

His May of youth and bloom of lustihood.

Cue: CLAUDIO: Away! I will now have to do with you.

Canst thou so daff me? Thou hast killed my child.

If thou kill’st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man.

Cue: LEONATO’s BROTHER: 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.— 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—

Cue: LEONATO'S BROTHER: Content yourself. 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!

Brother Anthony—

Cue: LEONATO’S BROTHER: Hold you content. What, man! I know them, yea, And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple— Scambling, outfacing, fashionmonging boys, That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander, Go anticly and show outward hideousness, And speak off half a dozen dang’rous words How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst, And this is all.

But brother Anthony—

Cue: PRINCE: 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 and very full of proof.

My lord, my lord—

Cue: PRINCE: I will not hear you.

No? Come, brother, away. I will be heard.

Cue: VERGES: Here, here comes Master Signior Leonato, and the Sexton too.

Which is the villain? Let me see his eyes,

That, when I note another man like him,

I may avoid him. Which of these is he?

Cue: BORACHIO: If you would know your wronger, look on me.

Art thou the slave that with thy breath hast killed

Mine innocent child?

Cue: BORACHIO: Yea, even I alone.

No, not so, villain, thou beliest thyself.

Here stand a pair of honorable men—

A third is fled—that had a hand in it.—

I thank you, princes, for my daughter’s death.

Record it with your high and worthy deeds.

’Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of

Cue: PRINCE: By my soul, nor I, And yet to satisfy this good old man I would bend under any heavy weight That he’ll enjoin me to.

I cannot bid you bid my daughter live—

That were impossible—but, I pray you both,

Possess the people in Messina here

How innocent she died. And if your love

Can labor aught in sad invention,

Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb

And sing it to her bones. Sing it tonight.

Tomorrow morning come you to my house,

And since you could not be my son-in-law,

Be yet my nephew. My brother hath a daughter,

Almost the copy of my child that’s dead,

And she alone is heir to both of us.

Give her the right you should have giv’n her cousin,

And so dies my revenge.

Cue: CLAUDIO: O, noble sir! Your overkindness doth wring tears from me. I do embrace your offer and dispose For henceforth of poor Claudio.

Tomorrow then I will expect your coming.

Tonight I take my leave. This naughty man

Shall face to face be brought to Margaret,

Who I believe was packed in all this wrong,

Hired to it by your brother.

Cue: BORACHIO: …They say he wears a key in his ear and a lock hanging by it and borrows money in God’s name, the which he hath used so long and never paid that now men grow hardhearted and will lend nothing for God’s sake. Pray you, examine him upon that point.

I thank thee for thy care and honest pains.

Cue: DOGBERRY: Your Worship speaks like a most thankful and reverent youth, and I praise God for you.

There’s for thy pains.

Cue: DOGBERRY: God save the foundation.

Go, I discharge thee of thy prisoner, and I

thank thee.

Cue: DOGBERRY: I leave an arrant knave with your Worship, which I beseech your Worship to correct yourself, for the example of others. God keep your Worship! I wish your Worship well. God restore you to health. I humbly give you leave to depart, and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it— Come, neighbor.

Until tomorrow morning, lords, farewell.