Act 3, Scene 1

Leonato's Garden.

[Enter HERO, MARGARET, and URSULA.]
Hero
858 Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour;
859 There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice
860 Proposing with the prince and Claudio:
861 Whisper her ear, and tell her, I and Ursala
862 Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse
863 Is all of her; say that thou overheard'st us,
864 And bid her steal into the pleached bower,
865 Where honey-suckles, ripen'd by the sun,
866 Forbid the sun to enter; like favourites,
867 Made proud by princes, that advance their pride
868 Against that power that bred it. There will she hide her,
869 To listen our propose. This is thy office;
870 Bear thee well in it and leave us alone.
Margaret
871 I'll make her come, I warrant you, presently.
[Exit.]
Hero
872 Now, Ursula, when Beatrice doth come,
873 As we do trace this alley up and down,
874 Our talk must only be of Benedick:
875 When I do name him, let it be thy part
876 To praise him more than ever man did merit.
877 My talk to thee must be how Benedick
878 Is sick in love with Beatrice: of this matter
879 Is little Cupid's crafty arrow made,
880 That only wounds by hearsay.
[Enter BEATRICE, behind.]
Hero
881 Now begin;
882 For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs
883 Close by the ground, to hear our conference.
Ursula
884 The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish
885 Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
886 And greedily devour the treacherous bait:
887 So angle we for Beatrice; who even now
888 Is couched in the woodbine coverture.
889 Fear you not my part of the dialogue.
Hero
890 Then go we near her, that her ear lose nothing
891 Of the false sweet bait that we lay for it.
[They advance to the bower.]
Hero
892 No, truly, Ursula, she is too disdainful;
893 I know her spirits are as coy and wild
894 As haggards of the rock.
Ursula
895 But are you sure
896 That Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?
Hero
897 So says the prince, and my new-trothed lord.
Ursula
898 And did they bid you tell her of it, madam?
Hero
899 They did entreat me to acquaint her of it;
900 But I persuaded them, if they lov'd Benedick,
901 To wish him wrestle with affection,
902 And never to let Beatrice know of it.
Ursula
903 Why did you so? Doth not the gentleman
904 Deserve as full as fortunate a bed
905 As ever Beatrice shall couch upon?
Hero
906 O god of love! I know he doth deserve
907 As much as may be yielded to a man;
908 But nature never fram'd a woman's heart
909 Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice;
910 Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,
911 Misprising what they look on, and her wit
912 Values itself so highly, that to her
913 All matter else seems weak. She cannot love,
914 Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
915 She is so self-endear'd.
Ursula
916 Sure I think so; And therefore certainly it were not good
917 She knew his love, lest she make sport at it.
Hero
918 Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man,
919 How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd,
920 But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd,
921 She would swear the gentleman should be her sister;
922 If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antick,
923 Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed;
924 If low, an agate very vilely cut;
925 If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds;
926 If silent, why, a block moved with none.
927 So turns she every man the wrong side out,
928 And never gives to truth and virtue that
929 Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.
Ursula
930 Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable.
Hero
931 No; not to be so odd, and from all fashions,
932 As Beatrice is, cannot be commendable.
933 But who dare tell her so? If I should speak,
934 She would mock me into air: O! she would laugh me
935 Out of myself, press me to death with wit.
936 Therefore let Benedick, like cover'd fire,
937 Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly:
938 It were a better death than die with mocks,
939 Which is as bad as die with tickling.
Ursula
940 Yet tell her of it: hear what she will say.
Hero
941 No; rather I will go to Benedick,
942 And counsel him to fight against his passion.
943 And, truly, I'll devise some honest slanders
944 To stain my cousin with. One doth not know
945 How much an ill word may empoison liking.
Ursula
946 O! do not do your cousin such a wrong.
947 She cannot be so much without true judgment,—
948 Having so swift and excellent a wit
949 As she is priz'd to have,—as to refuse
950 So rare a gentleman as Signior Benedick.
Hero
951 He is the only man of Italy,
952 Always excepted my dear Claudio.
Ursula
953 I pray you, be not angry with me, madam,
954 Speaking my fancy: Signior Benedick,
955 For shape, for bearing, argument and valour,
956 Goes foremost in report through Italy.
Hero
957 Indeed, he hath an excellent good name.
Ursula
958 His excellence did earn it, ere he had it.
959 When are you married, madam?
Hero
960 Why, every day, to-morrow. Come, go in:
961 I'll show thee some attires, and have thy counsel
962 Which is the best to furnish me to-morrow.
Ursula
963 She's lim'd, I warrant you: we have caught her, madam.
Hero
964 If it prove so, then loving goes by haps:
965 Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.
[Exeunt HERO and URSULA.]
[Advancing.]
Beatrice
966 What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
967 Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much?
968 Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!
969 No glory lives behind the back of such.
970 And, Benedick, love on; I will requite thee,
971 Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand:
972 If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee
973 To bind our loves up in a holy band;
974 For others say thou dost deserve, and I
975 Believe it better than reportingly.
[Exit.]

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Notes

TLN 864archaic vocab
“steal into the pleached bower”
A 'pleached bower' is an arbour formed by intertwining or interlacing the branches of closely planted trees or shrubs to create a shaded enclosure. Hero is telling Margaret to send Beatrice to hide in it so she can overhear the staged conversation without being seen.
historical 'Nothing': noting, eavesdropping, and the bawdy pun
TLN 879classical allusion
“little Cupid's crafty arrow made, That only wounds by hearsay”
Cupid, the Roman god of love, was pictured as a winged boy who shot gold-tipped arrows into people's hearts to make them fall in love. Hero says the 'arrow' that will wound Beatrice is hearsay alone — she will fall for Benedick not by seeing him but by overhearing that he loves her. The joke is that Cupid's weapon here is gossip, not a dart.
classical Cupid's golden and leaden arrows
TLN 882cultural context
“Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs Close by the ground”
The lapwing was proverbially known for flying close to the ground and making noise at a distance from its nest to distract intruders. Hero means that Beatrice, creeping low to eavesdrop without being spotted, moves exactly like this bird that skulks and dissembles.
TLN 884rhetorical device
“pleasant'st angling is to see the fish Cut with her golden oars the silver stream, And greedily devour the treacherous bait”
Ursula uses an extended metaphor comparing Beatrice to a fish who will greedily take the bait of false flattery about Benedick's love. 'Golden oars' are the fish's fins. The metaphor also describes what Hero and Ursula are doing: fishing, with deceptive bait.
TLN 893archaic vocab
“spirits are as coy and wild As haggards of the rock”
A 'haggard' was a wild hawk caught after it had already lived free and learned to fly for itself — as opposed to one trained from the nest. Haggards were notoriously difficult or impossible to tame. Hero is saying Beatrice's spirit is as proud and untameable as a wild cliff-hawk.
TLN 920rhetorical device
“she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antick, Made a foul blot”
To 'spell him backward' means to take every quality in a man and perversely read it as a flaw. Hero then lists examples in a rapid series: if handsome, Beatrice calls him effeminate ('her sister'); if dark-complexioned ('black'), she says Nature made him a grotesque blunder ('antick' = grotesque figure); if tall, an ill-made lance; if short, a badly carved gem.
TLN 943wordplay
“I'll devise some honest slanders To stain my cousin with. One doth not know How much an ill word may empoison liking”
'Honest slanders' is a deliberate contradiction: slander by definition is dishonest. Hero means she will spread harmless false reports (that Beatrice dislikes Benedick) to sour any chance of romance between them. The oxymoron is comic here, but 'empoison liking' ominously previews the far less innocent slander that will be used against Hero herself in Act 4.
historical A woman's honour: chastity and the double standard
TLN 963archaic vocab
“She's lim'd, I warrant you”
To be 'limed' is to be caught in birdlime — a sticky substance smeared on branches to trap birds by their feet. Ursula is saying Beatrice is caught, snared in the trap they have laid. The metaphor echoes the earlier angling comparison (TLN 884-887): both images present Beatrice as game taken by craft.
TLN 964wordplay
“loving goes by haps: Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps”
'Haps' means chance or luck. Hero's couplet rewrites the classical image of Cupid's arrow: instead of being struck by a gold dart, Beatrice has been caught by a 'trap' — the staged eavesdropping. The line is a wry, self-aware joke about the comedy's own machinery.
classical Cupid's golden and leaden arrowshistorical 'Nothing': noting, eavesdropping, and the bawdy pun
TLN 966cultural context
“What fire is in mine ears?”
Beatrice is alluding to the proverb that a person's ears burn or tingle when they are being talked about. The question is both literally true (she has just heard herself discussed at length) and a conventional idiom for the surprise of learning what others think of you in your absence.
TLN 971cultural context
“Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand”
The metaphor is from falconry: to 'tame' a hawk 'to the hand' means to train it so it will return to the falconer's glove. Beatrice is vowing to master her own 'wild' independence and submit it to Benedick's love, using the same bird-of-prey image Hero applied to her just minutes earlier ('haggards of the rock,' TLN 894).