ACT V.

SCENE I. Before LEONATO's House.

Enter LEONATO and ANTONIO.

Ant. If you go on thus, you will kill yourself; And 'tis not wisdom thus to second grief

Against yourself.

Leon.

I pray thee, cease thy counsel,

Which falls into mine ears as profitless

As water in a sieve: give not me counsel;

Nor let no comforter delight mine ear

But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine.

Bring me a father that so loved his child,

Whose joy of her is overwhelm'd like mine,

And bid him speak to me of patience;
Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine,
And let it answer every strain for strain,
As thus for thus, and such a grief for such,
In every lineament, branch, shape, and form :
If such a one will smile, and stroke his beard,
Bid sorrow wag, cry hem when he should groan,
Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk
With candle-wasters, bring him yet to me,

1

1 It appears that to stroke the beard and cry hem was often represented as a common gesture preparatory to the utterance of a wise saying, or to a display of profound book-learning. So in Troilus and Cressida, i. 3: "Now play me Nestor; hem and stroke thy beard." Also in Chapman's May-Day, ii. 1: "Thou shalt now see me stroke my beard, and speak sententiously." So that candle-wasters here evidently means those who "burn the midnight oil" in study. Jonson has it thus in his Cynthia's Revels: “Heart, was there ever so prosperous an invention thus unluckily perverted and spoiled by a

And I of him will gather patience.

But there is no such man: for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air, and agony with words.
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow;
But no man's virtue nor sufficiency

To be so moral when he shall endure

The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel :
My griefs cry louder than advertisement.2

Ant. Therein do men from children nothing differ.
Leon. 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 3 at chance and sufferance.

Ant. Yet bend not all the harm upon yourself;

Make those that do offend you suffer too.

Leon. 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,

whoreson book-worm, a candle-waster?" And so in The Hospitall of Incurable Fooles, 1600: "I which have known you better and more inwardly than a thousand of these candle-wasting book-worms." The general idea in the text is that of curing grief by sage counsel, as men often lose the sense of pain or misfortune in a drunken sleep.

2 Advertisement, even as now used, might easily pass over into the kindred sense of admonition or instruction.

3 Push is an old exclamation, equivalent to pish. So in Timon of Athens, iii. 6: “Push! did you see my cap?" spoken by one of the Lords when old Timon hurls stones at them, and drives them out from the sham banquet to which he had invited them.

And all of them that thus dishonour her.

Ant. Here comes the Prince and Claudio hastily.

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

lord:

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

D. Pedro. Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man. Ant. If he could right himself with quarrelling,

Some of us would lie low.

Claud.

Leon.

Who wrongs him?

Who!

Marry, thou wrong'st me; thou dissembler, thou.
Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword;

I fear thee not.

Claud.

Marry, beshrew my hand,

If it should give your age such cause of fear:

In faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword.

Leon. 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 wrong'd mine innocent child and me,
That I am forced to lay my reverence by,
And, with grey 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 !

Claud. My villainy !

Leon.

Thine, Claudio; thine, I say.
D. Pedro. You say not right, old man.
Leon.

My lord, my lord,

I'll prove it on his body, if he dare,
Despite his nice fence and his active practice,4
His May of youth and bloom of lustihood.

Claud. Away! I will not have to do with you.
Leon. Canst thou so daff me? Thou hast kill'd my

child:

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

Ant. 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, boy; come, sir boy, follow me :
Sir boy, I'll whip you from your foining fence ; 5

Nay, as I am a gentleman, I will.

Leon. Brother,

Ant. Content yourself. God knows I loved my niece;

And she is dead, slander'd to death by villains,

That dare as well answer a man indeed 6
As I dare take a serpent by the tongue;
Boys, apes, braggárts, Jacks, milksops! —
Leon.
Ant. Hold you content. What, man! I know them, yea,
And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple,

Brother Antony,

4 Practice here means exercise, or well-practised skill, in the use of the sword. Nice fence has much the same meaning, — exactness in the art of defence, or of fencing.

5 Foining is an old word for thrusting. — Fence is sword-practice, a teacher of which is still called a fencing-master.

6 Indeed here goes with man, not with answer; a real man, or one who is indeed a man; as in Hamlet's "A combination and a form indeed."

Scambling, out-facing, fashion-mongering boys,
That lie, and cog,8 and flout, deprave, and slander,
Go anticly, show outward hideousness,

And speak off half a dozen dangerous words,

How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst;
And this is all.

Leon. But, brother Antony,

Ant.

Come, 'tis no matter:

Do not you meddle; let me deal in this.

D. Pedro. Gentlemen both, we will not wake your pa

tience.9

My heart is sorry for your daughter's death :

But, on my honour, she was charged with nothing

But what was true, and very full of proof.

Leon. My lord, my lord,

D. Pedro.

Leon.

I will not hear you.

No?

And shall,

Come, brother, away. - I will be heard.

Ant.

Or some of us will smart for't. [Exeunt LEONATO and ANTONIO. D. Pedro. See, see; here comes the man we went to seek.

Enter BENEDICK.

Claud. Now, signior, what news?

7 Scambling appears to have been much the same as scrambling, shifting, or shuffling. "Griffe graffe," says Cotgrave, "by hook or by crook, squimble-squamble, scamblingly, catch that catch may."

24.

8 To cog is to cheat, to cajole, to play sly tricks. See vol. ii., page 85, note To go anticly is to go fantastically or apishly, like a buffoon. See page 198, note 4. "Show outward hideousness" is well explained in As You Like It, i. 3: "We'll have a swashing and a martial outside; as many other mannish cowards have that do outface it with their semblances."

9 That is, "rouse, stir up, convert your patience into anger." An image of sleep is implied in regard to patience. Patience is, properly, repose of mind; and to wake one's patience is to disturb it, to put it from itself. We have a like use of wake in Richard II., i. 3: “To wake our peace, which in our country's cradle draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep."