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LEONATO'S garden.
[Enter BENEDICK and MARGARET, meeting]
BENEDICK
Pray thee 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 thou deservst it.
MARGARET
To have no man come over me, why, shall I always keep below stairs?
BENEDICK
Thy 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 thee
call Beatrice, I give thee 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 hath legs.
BENEDICK
And therefore will come. The god of love that sits above, and knows me, and
knows me, how pitiful I deserve. I mean in singing, but in loving, Leander
the good swimmer, Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole bookful
of these quondam carpet-mangers, 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 rhyme, I have tried, I can
find out no rhyme to lady but baby, an innocent rhyme: for scorn, horn, a
hard rhyme: for school fool, a babbling rhyme: very ominous endings, no, I
was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms: sweet Beatrice wouldst thou come when I called thee?
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 ere I go, let me go with that I
came, which is, with knowing what hath passed between you and Claudio.
BENEDICK
Only foul words, and thereupon I will kiss thee.
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
Thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so forcible is thy wit,
but I must tell thee plainly, Claudio undergoes my challenge, and either I
must shortly hear from him, or I will subscribe him a coward, and I pray
thee now tell me, for which of my bad parts didst thou 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 thee
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
Thou 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 lime of good neighbors.
If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no
longer in monuments, than the bell rings, and the widow weeps.
BEATRICE
And how long is that think you?
BENEDICK
Question, why an hour in clamor 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 doth 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 hath 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 presently?
BEATRICE
Will you go hear this news signior?
BENEDICK
I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes: and
moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle's.
[Exeunt]