Key Quotes (Much Ado About Nothing)

I.I

• lamb

• war

• disease

• bark

• words

• noted

• pen

• Messenger: ‘[Claudio] in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion’

• Leonato: ‘kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and [Beatrice] … skirmish of wit between them’

• Beatrice: ‘O Lord, [Benedick] will hang upon [Claudio] like a disease’

• Beatrice: ‘I would rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me’

• Don John: ‘I am not of many words’

• Benedick: ‘I noted her not, but I looked on her’

• Benedick: ‘Pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker’s pen, and / hang me up at the door of a brothel-house for the sign of blind cupid’

I.II

• N/A

• N/A

I.III

• carriage

• villain

• alter

• food

• Don John: ‘it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any’

• Don John: ‘I am a plain-dealing villain’

• Don John: ‘let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me’

• Don John: ‘food to my displeasure, [Claudio] hath all the glory of my overthrow’

II.I

• heartburned

• beard

• poniards

• terminations

• stop

• laughing

• love-gods

• Beatrice: ‘I never can see [Don John] but I am heart-burned an hour after’

• Beatrice: ‘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’

• Benedick: ‘She speaks poniards, and every word stabs’

• Benedick: ‘if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her, she would infect the North Star’

• Beatrice: ‘Speak, cousin, or, if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak either’

• Leonato: ‘I heard my daughter say [Beatrice] hath often dreamt of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing’

• Don Pedro: ‘If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods.’

II.II

• impediment

• Don John: ‘Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me’

II.III

• dishes

• infection

• railed

• marks

• Benedick: ‘[Claudio’ was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and soldier, and now […] his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes’

• Claudio: ‘[Bendeck] hath ta’en th’infection’

• Benedick: ‘I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because I have railed so long against marriage’

• Benedick: ‘I do spy some marks of love in her’

III.I

• prouder

• Hero: ‘But Nature never fram’d a woman’s heart of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice’

III.II

• heart

• every man’s

• Don Pedro: ‘For what [Benedick’s] heart thinks his tongue speaks’

• Don John: ‘Leonato’s Hero, your Hero, every man’s Hero.’

III.III

• possessed

• devil

• Borachio: ‘Prince, Claudio and my master planted and placed and possessed by my master Don John’

• Borachio: ‘the devil my master’

III.IV

• night-gown

• cold

• Margaret: ‘By my troth’s but a night-gown in respect of yours […] yours is worth ten on’t

• Margaret: ‘A maid, and stuffed! There’s goodly catching of cold’

III.V

• N/A

• N/A

IV.I

• Venus

• shame

• wisdoms

• princes

• inwardness

• eat

• market-place

• Claudio: ‘You are more intemperate in your blood / than Venus, or those pamper’d animals / That rage in savage sensuality

• Leonato: ‘Death is the fairest cover for her shame / that may be wish’d for’

• Benedict: ‘If their wisdoms be misled in this, / the practice of it lives in John the B*stard, / whose spirits toil in frame of villainies’

• Friar: ‘Your daughter here the princes left for dead’

• Benedick: ‘my inwardness and love / is very much unto the Prince and Claudio’

• Beatrice: ‘Do not swear and eat it.’

• Beatrice: ‘O God that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place’

IV.II

• N/A

• N/A

V.I

• slander

• poison

• virtuous

• Leonato: ‘[Claudio’s] slander hath gone through and through her heart, / and she lies buried with her ancestors’

• Claudio: ‘I have drunk poison while he utter’d it.’

• Borachio: ‘[Margaret] knew not what she did when she spoke to me, but always hath been just and virtuous’

V.II

• mistress

• foul

• Benedick: ‘Sweet Mistress Margaret’

• Beatrice: ‘Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome’

V.III

• N/A

• N/A

V.IV

• defil’d

• hands

• consumption

• stop

• wife

• punisments

• Hero: ‘One Hero died defil’d, but I do live, / and surely as I live, I am a maid.’

• Benedick: ‘Here’s our own hands against our hearts’

• Beatrice: ‘I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption’

• Benedick: ‘Peace! I will stop your mouth. [Kisses Her]’

• Benedick: ‘Prince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife!’

• Benedick: ‘Think not on [Don John] till tomorrow; I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him.’