Act 2, Scene 3

--LEONATO'S Garden.

[Enter Benedick.]
Benedick
644 Boy!
[Enter a Boy.]
Boy
645 Signior?
Benedick
646 In my chamber-window lies a book; bring it hither to me in the
647 orchard.
Boy
648 I am here already, sir.
Benedick
649 I know that; but I would have thee hence, and here again.
[Exit Boy.]
Benedick
650 I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much another man is a fool
651 when he dedicates his behaviours to love, will, after he hath laughed
652 at such shallow follies in others, become the argument of his own
653 scorn by falling in love: and such a man is Claudio. I have known,
654 when there was no music with him but the drum and the fife; and now had
655 he rather hear the tabor and the pipe: I have known when he would have
656 walked ten mile afoot to see a good armour; and now will he lie ten
657 nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to
658 speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier; and
659 now is he turned orthography; his words are a very fantastical
660 banquet, just so many strange dishes. May I be so converted, and see
661 with these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not: I will not be sworn but
662 love may transform me to an oyster; but I'll take my oath on it, till
663 he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool. One
664 woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well; another
665 virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman
666 shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall be, that's certain; wise, or
667 I'll none; virtuous, or I'll never cheapen her; fair, or I'll never
668 look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not I for an angel;
669 of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what
670 colour it please God. Ha! the prince and Monsieur Love! I will hide me
671 in the arbour.
[Withdraws.]
[Enter DON PEDRO, LEONATO, and CLAUDIO, followed by BALTHAZAR and Musicians.]
Don Pedro
672 Come, shall we hear this music?
Claudio
673 Yea, my good lord.
674 How still the evening is,
675 As hush'd on purpose to grace harmony!
Don Pedro
676 See you where Benedick hath hid himself?
Claudio
677 O! very well, my lord: the music ended,
678 We'll fit the kid-fox with a penny-worth.
Don Pedro
679 Come, Balthazar, we'll hear that song again.
Balthasar
680 O! good my lord, tax not so bad a voice
681 To slander music any more than once.
Don Pedro
682 It is the witness still of excellency,
683 To put a strange face on his own perfection.
684 I pray thee, sing, and let me woo no more.
Balthasar
685 Because you talk of wooing, I will sing;
686 Since many a wooer doth commence his suit
687 To her he thinks not worthy; yet he wooes;
688 Yet will he swear he loves.
Don Pedro
689 Nay, pray thee come;
690 Or if thou wilt hold longer argument,
691 Do it in notes.
Balthasar
692 Note this before my notes;
693 There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.
Don Pedro
694 Why these are very crotchets that he speaks;
695 Notes, notes, forsooth, and nothing!
[Music.]
Benedick
696 Now, divine air! now is his soul ravished! Is it not strange that
697 sheep's gutsshould hale souls out of men's bodies? Well, a horn for
698 my money, when all's done.
[Balthasar sings.]
Balthasar
699 Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
700 Men were deceivers ever;
701 One foot in sea, and one on shore,
702 To one thing constant never.
703 Then sigh not so,
704 But let them go,
705 And be you blithe and bonny,
706 Converting all your sounds of woe
707 Into Hey nonny, nonny.
Balthasar
708 Sing no more ditties, sing no mo
709 Of dumps so dull and heavy;
710 The fraud of men was ever so,
711 Since summer first was leavy.
712 Then sigh not so,
713 But let them go,
714 And be you blithe and bonny,
715 Converting all your sounds of woe
716 Into Hey nonny, nonny.
Don Pedro
717 By my troth, a good song.
Balthasar
718 And an ill singer, my lord.
Don Pedro
719 Ha, no, no, faith; thou singest well enough for a shift.
[Aside.]
Benedick
720 An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would
721 have hanged him; and I pray God his bad voice bode no mischief. I had
722 as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come
723 after it.
Don Pedro
724 Yea, marry; dost thou hear, Balthazar? I pray thee, get us some
725 excellent music, for to-morrow night we would have it at the Lady
726 Hero's chamber-window.
Balthasar
727 The best I can, my lord.
Don Pedro
728 Do so: farewell.
[Exeunt BALTHAZAR and Musicians.]
Don Pedro
729 Come hither, Leonato: what was it you told me of to-day, that your
730 niece Beatrice was in love with Signior Benedick?
Claudio
731 O! ay:—
[Aside to DON PEDRO]
Claudio
732 Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits. I did never
733 think that lady would have loved any man.
Leonato
734 No, nor I neither; but most wonderful that she should so dote on
735 Signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviours seemed ever
736 to abhor.
[Aside.]
Benedick
737 Is't possible? Sits the wind in that corner?
Leonato
738 By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think of it but that she
739 loves him with an enraged affection: it is past the infinite of thought.
Don Pedro
740 May be she doth but counterfeit.
Claudio
741 Faith, like enough.
Leonato
742 O God! counterfeit! There was never counterfeit of passion came so near
743 the life of passion as she discovers it.
Don Pedro
744 Why, what effects of passion shows she?
[Aside.]
Claudio
745 Bait the hook well: this fish will bite.
Leonato
746 What effects, my lord? She will sit you;
[To Claudio.]
Leonato
747 You heard
748 my daughter tell you how.
Claudio
749 She did, indeed.
Don Pedro
750 How, how, I pray you? You amaze me: I would have thought her spirit
751 had been invincible against all assaults of affection.
Leonato
752 I would have sworn it had, my lord; especially against Benedick.
[Aside]
Benedick
753 I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded
754 fellow speaks it: knavery cannot, sure, hide itself in such reverence.
[Aside.]
Claudio
755 He hath ta'en the infection: hold it up.
Don Pedro
756 Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?
Leonato
757 No; and swears she never will: that's her torment.
Claudio
758 Tis true, indeed; so your daughter says: 'Shall I,' says she, 'that
759 have so oft encountered him with scorn, write to him that I love him?'
Leonato
760 This says she now when she is beginning to write to him; for she'll
761 be up twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her smock till
762 she have writ a sheet of paper: my daughter tells us all.
Claudio
763 Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest your
764 daughter told us of.
Leonato
765 O! when she had writ it, and was reading it over, she found
766 Benedick and Beatrice between the sheet?
Claudio
767 That.
Leonato
768 O! she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence; railed at herself,
769 that she should be so immodest to write to one that she knew would
770 flout her: 'I measure him,' says she, 'by my own spirit; for I should
771 flout him, if he writ to me; yea, though I love him, I should.'
Claudio
772 Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her heart, tears
773 her hair, prays, curses; 'O sweet Benedick! God give me patience!'
Leonato
774 She doth indeed; my daughter says so; and the ecstasy hath so much
775 overborne her, that my daughter is sometimes afeard she will do a
776 desperate outrage to herself. It is very true.
Don Pedro
777 It were good that Benedick knew of it by some other, if she will
778 not discover it.
Claudio
779 To what end? he would make but a sport of it and torment the poor
780 lady worse.
Don Pedro
781 An he should, it were an alms to hang him. She's an excellent sweet
782 lady, and, out of all suspicion, she is virtuous.
Claudio
783 And she is exceeding wise.
Don Pedro
784 In everything but in loving Benedick.
Leonato
785 O! my lord, wisdom and blood combating in so tender a body, we have
786 ten proofs to one that blood hath the victory. I am sorry for her, as
787 I have just cause, being her uncle and her guardian.
Don Pedro
788 I would she had bestowed this dotage on me; I would have daffed all
789 other respects and made her half myself. I pray you, tell Benedick of
790 it, and hear what a' will say.
Leonato
791 Were it good, think you?
Claudio
792 Hero thinks surely she will die; for she says she will die if he love
793 her not, and she will die ere she make her love known, and she will die
794 if he woo her, rather than she will bate one breath of her accustomed
795 crossness.
Don Pedro
796 She doth well: if she should make tender of her love, 'tis very
797 possible he'll scorn it; for the man,—as you know all,—hath a
798 contemptible spirit.
Claudio
799 He is a very proper man.
Don Pedro
800 He hath indeed a good outward happiness.
Claudio
801 Fore God, and in my mind, very wise.
Don Pedro
802 He doth indeed show some sparks that are like wit.
Claudio
803 And I take him to be valiant.
Don Pedro
804 As Hector, I assure you: and in the managing of quarrels you may say
805 he is wise; for either he avoids them with great discretion, or
806 undertakes them with a most Christian-like fear.
Leonato
807 If he do fear God, a' must necessarily keep peace: if he break the
808 peace, he ought to enter into a quarrel with fear and trembling.
Don Pedro
809 And so will he do; for the man doth fear God, howsoever it seems not
810 in him by some large jests he will make. Well, I am sorry for your
811 niece. Shall we go seek Benedick and tell him of her love?
Claudio
812 Never tell him, my lord: let her wear it out with good counsel.
Leonato
813 Nay, that's impossible: she may wear her heart out first.
Don Pedro
814 Well, we will hear further of it by your daughter: let it cool the
815 while. I love Benedick well, and I could wish he would modestly
816 examine himself, to see how much he is unworthy so good a lady.
Leonato
817 My lord, will you walk? dinner is ready.
[Aside.]
Claudio
818 If he do not dote on her upon this, I will never trust my
819 expectation.
[Aside.]
Don Pedro
820 Let there be the same net spread for her; and that must your
821 daughter and her gentle-woman carry. The sport will be, when they hold
822 one an opinion of another's dotage, and no such matter: that's the
823 scene that I would see, which will be merely a dumb-show. Let us send
824 her to call him in to dinner.
[Exeunt DON PEDRO, CLAUDIO, and LEONATO.]
[Advancing from the arbour.]
Benedick
825 This can be no trick: the conference was
826 sadly borne. They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity
827 the lady: it seems her affections have their full bent. Love me! why,
828 it must be requited. I hear how I am censured: they say I will bear
829 myself proudly, if I perceive the love come from her; they say too that
830 she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I did never think
831 to marry: I must not seem proud: happy are they that hear their
832 detractions, and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair:
833 'tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous: 'tis so, I cannot
834 reprove it; and wise, but for loving me: by my troth, it is no
835 addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be
836 horribly in love with her. I may chance have some odd quirks and
837 remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against
838 marriage; but doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his
839 youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and
840 these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his
841 humour? No; the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a
842 bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Here comes
843 Beatrice. By this day! she's a fair lady: I do spy some marks of love
844 in her.
[Enter BEATRICE.]
Beatrice
845 Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.
Benedick
846 Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.
Beatrice
847 I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to thank me:
848 if it had been painful, I would not have come.
Benedick
849 You take pleasure then in the message?
Beatrice
850 Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knife's point, and choke
851 a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior: fare you well.
[Exit.]
Benedick
852 Ha! 'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner,'
853 there's a double meaning in that. 'I took no more pains for those
854 thanks than you took pains to thank me,' that's as much as to say,
855 Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks. If I do not take
856 pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a Jew. I
857 will go get her picture.
[Exit.]

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Notes

TLN 651archaic vocab
“dedicates his behaviours to love, will, after he hath laughed”
'Dedicates his behaviours to love' means devotes his conduct entirely to courting. Benedick mocks any man who, after laughing at love-struck fools, becomes himself the subject ('argument') of mockery by falling in love — a fate he says has now befallen Claudio.
TLN 654cultural context
“no music with him but the drum and the fife; and now had he rather hear the tabor and the pipe”
The drum and fife (a high-pitched military flute) were the instruments of soldiers on the march; the tabor (a small drum) and pipe were instruments of festive dancing and entertainment. Benedick's contrast maps Claudio's change from soldier to lover: he has swapped the music of war for the music of courtship.
TLN 657archaic vocab
“carving the fashion of a new doublet”
'Carving' here means planning or devising, and a 'doublet' is the close-fitted jacket worn by men in the period. Claudio, who once walked ten miles to inspect armour, now lies awake designing his fashionable outfit — the classic sign of a man newly in love and preoccupied with his appearance.
TLN 659archaic vocab
“now is he turned orthography; his words are a very fantastical banquet”
'Turned orthography' means he has become a master of elaborate, correct, over-refined speech — as if everything he says is carefully spelled out according to rule. Benedick follows up the image: Claudio's words are now a 'fantastical banquet' of strange dishes, meaning his speech is a showy, exotic spread rather than plain honest fare.
historical Petrarch and the Petrarchan lover
TLN 662wordplay
“love may transform me to an oyster; but I'll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me”
Benedick uses the oyster as the image of a man utterly closed off from the world — sealed in his shell, silent, going nowhere. He is willing to admit that love might theoretically reduce him to such a witless, dumb creature, but insists it will not make him a fool before that final transformation.
TLN 666archaic vocab
“wise, or I'll none; virtuous, or I'll never cheapen her”
'Cheapen' means to bargain for, to make inquiry after the price of — to consider buying. Benedick is listing his non-negotiable requirements for a wife: she must be wise, or he will not even enquire after her. The idiom treats a prospective wife as a commodity to be priced, reflecting the economic language of Elizabethan courtship.
TLN 692wordplay
“Note this before my notes; There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting”
Balthasar stacks 'note' (pay attention), 'notes' (musical notes), 'noting' (noticing, observing), and the echoed pun runs into Don Pedro's 'Notes, notes, forsooth, and nothing!' The title's central pun is here at its most explicit: 'nothing' sounded almost like 'noting' in Elizabethan English. All the plot's eavesdropping — two tricks staged in this very garden — turns on the same word.
historical 'Nothing': noting, eavesdropping, and the bawdy pun
TLN 697cultural context
“sheep's gutsshould hale souls out of men's bodies? Well, a horn for my money”
Lute and viol strings were made from gut — cleaned and stretched sheep intestine. Benedick mocks the power of music to move men ('hale souls out of men's bodies') by reminding us what string instruments are literally made from. His preference for 'a horn' is a quick, dismissive preference for simple wind music over elaborate stringed performance — and also a covert joke about the cuckold's horns.
historical The cuckold's horns
TLN 699cultural context
“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever”
Balthasar's song is a set-piece on male inconstancy — men are 'ever' deceivers, with one foot on land and one at sea, never constant. Women are advised to stop mourning this and instead 'let them go' and be 'blithe and bonny.' Placed just before the staged trick that will make Benedick believe Beatrice loves him, the song is an ironic commentary: the same men who are 'deceivers ever' are about to deceive their friend — for his good.
TLN 722cultural context
“heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it”
The night-raven (probably the raven or night-crow) was believed to be an omen of death or disaster — its cry heard at night foretold plague, misfortune, or a death in the house. Benedick, still dismissing Balthasar's voice, says he would rather have heard this death-omen bird than endure the singing — it would have been no worse news.
TLN 732cultural context
“Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits”
Claudio speaks in the language of fowling: a 'stalk' is the hunter's approach, creeping behind cover (a 'stalking-horse') to get within range of a bird; 'the fowl sits' means the prey is stationary and within reach — the shot can be taken. The 'fowl' is Benedick, now hidden in the arbour and overhearing. Don Pedro and Claudio are the hunters.
TLN 737archaic vocab
“Sits the wind in that corner?”
A proverbial expression meaning 'Is that how things stand? Is that the way the wind blows?' Benedick is astonished — he is hearing that Beatrice, who has shown him nothing but disdain, is secretly in love with him. The phrase pictures the direction of events as a wind shifting unexpectedly to a new quarter.
TLN 753archaic vocab
“I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it”
A 'gull' is a trick, a hoax — the act of deceiving a gullible person (the same root as 'gullible'). Benedick suspects he is being fooled, but Leonato's age and respectability ('the white-bearded fellow') reassure him: surely an old man of his standing would not participate in a deception. He is wrong, of course — Leonato is in on the plot.
TLN 785cultural context
“wisdom and blood combating in so tender a body”
'Blood' in this period meant passion, desire, and the hot emotions — the opposite of cool reason or 'wisdom.' Leonato argues that when passion and reason fight it out in someone as young and 'tender' as Beatrice, the passions win nine times out of ten ('ten proofs to one that blood hath the victory'). It was a standard Elizabethan view that youth was ruled by its humours.
TLN 804classical allusion
“As Hector, I assure you”
Hector, the greatest warrior of Troy, was the classical benchmark for martial courage — the most celebrated defender in the Trojan War, killed by Achilles. Don Pedro praises Benedick's valour by comparing him to Hector, then immediately undercuts it: he is also wise 'in the managing of quarrels' because he either avoids them with discretion or enters them with 'Christian-like fear' — meaning he is not quite the fearless Hector after all.
TLN 827archaic vocab
“her affections have their full bent”
'Bent' is drawn from archery: the full bend of a bow is the point at which the string is pulled back as far as it will go and the arrow is at maximum readiness to fly. To say Beatrice's affections are at 'full bent' means her love is fully stretched, at its greatest intensity — on the verge of releasing.
TLN 840rhetorical device
“paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour”
'Paper bullets of the brain' are quips and witticisms — they are made only of words ('paper'), fired from the wit ('brain'), and cannot actually stop anyone. A 'career' is a full gallop or a free course of action; 'humour' here means inclination or temperament. Benedick is asking: can mere mocking words stop a man from following his own inclination? He answers: no.
TLN 841cultural context
“No; the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor”
'The world must be peopled' was a Christian and civic duty: marriage and the begetting of children were held to be obligations that no man could simply opt out of. Benedick deploys it as his all-purpose excuse for reversing his lifelong vow — if he marries, he is merely doing his duty to nature and society.