Claud. Give me your hand before this holy friar: I am your husband, if you like of me. Hero. And when I lived, I was your other wife : [Unmasking. And when you loved, you were my other husband. Hero. Nothing certainer : One Hero died defiled; 3 but I do live, And, surely as I live, I am a maid. D. Pedro. The former Hero! Hero that is dead! F. Fran. All this amazement can I qualify; When, after that the holy rites are ended, I'll tell you largely of fair Hero's death: And to the chapel let us presently. Bene. Soft and fair, friar. - Which is Beatrice? Beat. [Unmasking.] I answer to that name. What is your will? Bene. Do not you love me? Beat. Why, no; no more than reason. Bene. Why, then your uncle, and the Prince, and Claudio Have been deceived; for they swore you did. Beat. Do not you love me? 8 Of course Hero means that she was defiled in the same sense that she died. She was believed to be defiled, and she was believed to be dead, and she was, in reality, just as much the one as the other, and no more. The word is used just so again in King Lear, iii. 6: "When false opinion, whose wrong thought defiles thee," &c. But, indeed, loss of good name and of social sweetness through evil report or false imputation is a sort of death to a soul like Hero's, or rather something worse than death; and a perfect recovery from such a loss is, to her, like a coming to life again. See Critical Notes. 4 The meaning probably is, “Let that which seems wonderful be treated as a common or ordinary event"; that is, act as if there were nothing strange about it. Bene. Troth, no; no more than reason. Beat. Why, then my cousin, Margaret, and Ursula A halting sonnet of his own pure brain, Hero. And here's another, Writ in my cousin's hand, stol'n from her pocket, Bene. A miracle! here's our own hands against our hearts. Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity. Beat. I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion; and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption. Bene. Peace! I will stop your mouth. [Kissing her. D. Pedro. How dost thou, Benedick, the married man? Bene. I'll tell thee what, Prince; a college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humour. Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram? No: if a man will be beaten with brains, he shall wear nothing handsome about him. In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion. For thy part, Claudio, I did think to have beaten thee; but in that 5 thou 5 In that was much used for inasmuch as or because. art like to be my kinsman, live unbruised, and love my cousin. Claud. I had well hoped thou wouldst have denied Beatrice, that I might have cudgell'd thee out of thy single life, to make thee a double-dealer; which, out of question, thou wilt be, if my cousin do not look exceeding narrowly to thee. Bene. Come, come, we are friends. Let's have a dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our own hearts and our wives' heels. Leon. We'll have dancing afterward. Bene. First, of my word; therefore play, music! - Prince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife: there is no staff more reverend than one tipped with horn.6 Enter a Messenger. Mess. My lord, your brother John is ta'en in flight, And brought with armèd men back to Messina. Bene. Think not on him till to-morrow: I'll devise thee brave punishments for him.-Strike up, pipers ! [Dance. [Exeunt. 6 Alluding, no doubt, to the walking-sticks or stayes of elderly persons, which were often tipped or headed with horn, sometimes crosswise, in imitation of the crutched sticks or potences of the friars. Chaucer's Sompnour describes one of his friars as having a "scrippe and tipped staff"; and he adds that "His felaw had a staf tipped with horn."― Benedick's sportive quibble upon horn is, I presume, obvious enough. See, however, vol. ii., page 47, note 11. CRITICAL NOTES. ACT I., SCENE 1. Page 155. Enter LEONATO, HERO, and BEATRICE, with a Messenger. - The old copies have "Enter Leonato, Governour of Messina, Innogen his wife, Hero his daughter, and Beatrice his Neece, with a messenger." Again, at the beginning of the second Act, the wife is introduced among the other persons. But, as "Innogen his wife" does not utter a word throughout the play, and as there are divers places where she could hardly be a mere dummy were she present, the name is rightly omitted in modern stage-directions. Theobald may be right in the conjecture, that "the Poet had in his first plan designed such a character, which, on a survey of it, he found would be superfluous, and therefore he left it out." P. 155. I find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour, &c. - Here, and also in the first speech of the play, the old editions have Peter instead of Pedro. P. 159. Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed on as Signior Benedick? - The old text has it instead of on. It is evident that the word should be either her or on. P. 160. Scratching could not make it worse, an’twere such a face as yours. So Collier's second folio. The old text reads "such a face as yours were." Here were is manifestly a good deal worse than superfluous. P. 162. D. Pedro. If it were so, so were it utter'd. In the old copies, this speech is assigned to Claudio. I can see no fitness, or even meaning, in the speech, as coming from him; whereas the Prince might very naturally say, "If Claudio were really in love with Hero, he |