Shal. That's good too: but what needs either your 'mum' or her 'budget?' the white will decipher her well enough. It hath struck ten o'clock. Page. The night is dark; light and spirits will become it well. Heaven prosper our sport! No man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns. Let's away; follow me. [Exeunt. SCENE III. A street leading to the Park. Enter MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and DOCTOR CAIUS. Mrs. Page. Master doctor, my daughter is in green: when you see your time, take her by the hand, away with her to the deanery, and dispatch it quickly. Go before into the Park: we two must go together. Caius. I know vat I have to do. Adieu. Mrs. Page. Fare you well, sir. [Exit Caius.] My husband will not rejoice so much at the abuse of Falstaff as he will chafe at the doctor's marrying my daughter: but 'tis no matter; better a little chiding than a great deal of heart-break. 11 lechery Those that betray them do no treachery. Mrs. Ford. The hour draws on. To the oak, to the oak! [Exeunt. SCENE IV. Windsor Park. Enter SIR HUGH EVANS, disguised, with others as Fairies. Evans. Trib, trib, fairies; come; and remember your parts: be pold, I pray you; follow me into the pit; and when I give the watch-'ords, do as I pid you: come, come; trib, trib [Exeunt. SCENE V. Another part of the Park. Fal. The Windsor bell hath struck twelve; the minute draws on. Now, the hot-blooded gods assist me! Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa; love set on thy horns. O powerful love! that, in some respects, makes a beast a man, in some other, a man a beast, You were also, Jupiter, a swan for the love of Leda. O omnipotent Love! how near the god drew to the complexion of a goose! A fault done first in the form of a beast. O Jove, a beastly fault! And then another fault in the semblance of a fowl; think on't, Jove; a foul fault! When gods have hot backs, what shall poor men do? For me, I am here a Windsor stag; and the fattest, I think, i' the forest. Send me a cool rut-time, Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow? Who comes here? my doe? Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE. Mrs. Ford. Sir John! art thou there, my deer? my male deer? Fal. My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves, hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here. Mrs. Ford. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart. Fal. Divide me like a bribe buck, each a haunch: I will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands. Am I a woodman, ha? Speak I like Herne the hunter? Why, now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution. As I am a true spirit, welcome! [Noise within. Mrs. Page. Alas, what noise ? Enter SIR HUGH EVANS, disguised as before; PISTOL, as Hobgoblin; MISTRESS QUICKLY, ANNE PAGE, and others, as Fairies, with tapers. Quick. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white, You moonshine revellers and shades of night, Pist. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys. Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap: Where fires thou find'st unraked and hearths unswept, There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry : Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery. 50 Fal. They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die : I'll wink and couch no man their works musi eye. [Lies down upon his face. Evans. Where's Bede? Go you, and where you find a maid That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said, Raise up the organs of her fantasy: The several chairs of order look you scour Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, and MISTRESS FORD. Page. Nay, do not fly; I think we have watch'd you now : Will none but Herne the hunter serve your 70 Let sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery, Buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee: Fairies use flowers for their charactery. 80 Evans. Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set; And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be, To guide our measure round about the tree. But, stay; I smell a man of middle-earth. Fal. Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese! Pist. Vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth. Quick. With trial-fire touch me his fingerend: If he be chaste, the flame will back descend And turn him to no pain; but if he start, 90 It is the flesh of a corrupted heart. Pist. A trial, come. Evans. Come, will this wood take fire ? [They burn him with their tapers. Fal. Oh, Oh, Oh ! Quick. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire ! turn? Mrs. Page. I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.. Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives? [yokes See you these, husband? do not these fair Become the forest better than the town? Ford. Now, sir, who's a cuckold now? Master Brook, Falstaff's a knave, a cuckoldly knave; here are his horns, Master Brook: and, Master Brook, he hath enjoyed nothing of Ford's but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds of money, which must be paid to Master Brook; his horses are arrested for it, Master Brook. Mrs. Ford. Sir John, we have had ill luck; we could never meet. I will never take you for my love again; but I will always count you my deer. Fal. I do begin to perceive that I am made Ford. Ay, and an ox too: both the proofs an ass. are extant. Fal. And these are not fairies? I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies: and yet the guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers, drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief, in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that they were fairies. See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent, when 'tis upon ill employment! Evans. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires, and fairies will not pinse you. Ford. Well said, fairy Hugh. 140 SONG. Fie on sinful fantasy! Fie on lust and luxury! About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme; And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time. pray you. 100 Ford. I will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art able to woo her in good English. Fal. Have I laid my brain in the sun and dried it, that it wants matter to prevent so gross o'erreaching as this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? shall I have a coxcomb of frize? 'Tis time I were choked with a piece Evans. Seese is not good to give putter; your belly is all putter. Lust is but a bloody fire, Kindled with unchaste desire, Fed in heart, whose flames aspire As thoughts do blow them, higher and of toasted cheese. Fal. Seese' and 'putter'! have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This is enough to be the decay of lust and late-walking through the realm. Mrs. Page. A puffed man? 160 Page, Old, cold, withered and of intolerable entrails? Ford. And one that is as slanderous as Satan? Page. And as poor as Job? Ford. And as wicked as his wife? Evans. And given to fornications, and to taverns and sack and wine and metheglins, and to drinkings and swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles? Fal. Well, I am your theme: you have the start of me; I am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel; ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me: use me as you will. Ford. Marry, sir, we'll bring you to Windsor, to one Master Brook, that you have cozened of money, to whom you should have been a pander: over and above that you have suffered, I think to repay that money will be a biting affliction. Page. Yet be cheerful, knight thou shalt eat a posset to-night at my house; where I will desire thee to laugh at my wife, that now laughs at thee: tell her Master Slender hath married her daughter. Mrs. Page. [Aside] Doctors doubt that: if Anne Page be my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius' wife. Slen. What need you tell me that? I think so, when I took a boy for a girl. If I had been married to him, for all he was in woman's apparel, I would not have had him. Page. Why, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you how you should know my daughter by her garments? Slen. I went to her in white, and cried 'mum,' and she cried 'budget,' as Anne and I had appointed; and yet it was not Anne, but a postmaster's boy. Mrs. Page. Why, did you take her in green? Caius. Ay, by gar, and 'tis a boy: by gar, I'll raise all Windsor. [Exit. Ford. This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne ? Page. My heart misgives me: here comes Master Fenton. Ford. Stand not amazed; here is no remedy: In love the heavens themselves do guide the state; Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate. Fal. I am glad, though you have ta'en a special stand to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanced. 250 Page. Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give thee joy! What cannot be eschew'd must be embraced. Fal. When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased. Mrs. Page. Well, I will muse no further. Master Fenton, Heaven give you many, many merry days! Good husband, let us every one go home, And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire; Sir John and all. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. (WRITTEN ABOUT 1598.) INTRODUCTION. Much Ado About Nothing was entered on the Stationer's register, August 23, 1600, and a wellprinted quarto edition appeared in the same year. The play is not mentioned by Meres, who wrote in 1598, and it is probable therefore that it was written at some time in the interval between 1098 and 1600. For the graver portion of the play-the Claudio and Hero story-Shakespeare had an original, perhaps Belleforest's translation in his Histoires Tragiques of Bandello's 22nd Novella, The story of Ariodante and Genevra in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (canto v.) is substantially the same. This episode had been translated twice into English before Harrington's complete translation of the Orlando Furioso appeared in 1591; and it had formed the subject of a play acted before the Queen in 1582-83; the story was also told, in a somewhat altered form, by Spenser (Faerie Queen, II., 4). No original has been found for the merrier portion of the play, and Benedick and Beatrice were probably creations of Shakespeare. Much Ado About Nothing was popular on the stage in Shakespeare's day, and has sustained its reputation. Its variety, ranging from almost burlesque to almost tragedy, and from the euphemistic speech of courtiers to the blundering verbosity of clowns, has contributed to the success of the play. The chief persons, Hero and Claudio, Beatrice and Benedick, are contrasted pairs. Hero's character is kept subdued and quiet in tone, to throw out the force and color of the character of Beatrice; she is gentle, affectionate, tender, and if playful, playful in a gentle way. If our interest in Hero were made very strong, che pain of her unmerited shame and suffering would be too keen. And Claudio is far from being a lover like Romeo; his wooing is done by proxy, and he does not sink under the anguish of Hero's disgrace and supposed death. Don John, the villain of the piece, is a melancholy egoist, who looks sourly on all the world, and has a special grudge against his brother's young favorite Claudio. The chief force of Shakespeare in the play comes out in the characters of Benedick and Beatrice. They have not a touch of misanthropy, nor of sentimentality, but are thoroughly healthy and hearty human creatures; at first a little too much self-pleased, but framed by-and-by to be entirely pleased with one another. The thoughts of each from the first are pre-occupied with the other, but neither will put self-esteem to the hazard of a rebuke of making the first advances in love; it only needs, however, that this danger should be removed for the pair to admit the fact that nature has made them over against one another-as their significant names suggest-for man and wife. Dogberry and Verges, as well as Beatrice and Benedick, are creations of Shakespeare. The blundering watchmen of the time are a source of fun with several Elizabethan playwrights; but Dogberry and goodman Verges are the princes of blundering and incapable officials. It is a charming incongruity to find, while Leonato rages and Benedick offers his challenge, that the solemn ass Dogberry is the one to unravel the tangled threads of their fate. HERO, daughter to Leonato. MARGARET: gentlewoman attending o URSULA, Hero. Messengers, Watch, Attendants, &c. SCENE: Messina. ACT I. Mess. A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuffed with all honorable virtues. Beat. It is so, indeed; he is no less than a stuffed man: but for the stuffing, -well, we are 60 SCENE I. Before LEONATO's house. Enter LEONATO, HERO, and BEATRICE, with all mortal. a Messenger. Leon. I learn in this letter that Don Peter of Arragon comes this night to Messina. Mess. He is very near by this: he was not three leagues off when I left him. Leon. How many gentlemen have you lost in this action? Mess. But few of any sort, and none of name. Leon. A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers. I find here that Don Peter hath bestowed much honor on a young Florentine called Claudio. Mess. Much deserved on his part and equally remembered by Don Pedro he hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion he hath indeed better bettered expectation than you must expect of me to tell you how. Leon. He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it. Mess. I have already delivered him letters, and there appears much joy in him; even so much that joy could not show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness. Leon. Did he break out into tears ? Leon. A kind overflow of kindness: there are no faces truer than those that are so washed. How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping! Beat. I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars or no? 31 Mess. O, he's returned; and as pleasant as ever he was. Beat. He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged Cupid at the flight; and my uncle's fool, reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed? for indeed I promised to eat all of his killing. Leon. Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he'll be meet with you, I doubt it not. Mess. He hath done good service, lady, in these wars. Beat. You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it: he is a very valiant trencherman; he hath an excellent stomach. Leon. You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her: they never meet but there's a skirmish of wit between them. Beat. Alas! he gets nothing by that. In our last conflict four of his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man governed with one: so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse; for it is all the wealth that he hath left, to be known a reasonable creature. Who is his companion now? He hath every month a new sworn brother. Mess. Is't possible? Beat. Very easily possible: he wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block. Mess. I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books. Beat. No; an he were, I would burn my study. But, I pray you, who is his companion? Is there no young squarer now that will make a voyage with him to the devil? Mess. Hs is most in the company of the right noble Claudio. Beat. O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease: he is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! if he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere a' be cured. Mess. I will hold friends with you, lady. Leon. You will never run mad, niece. Enter DON PEDRO, DON JOHN, CLAUDIO, 90 D. Pedro. Good Signior Leonato, you are come to meet your trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it. Leon. Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your grace: for trouble being gone, comfort should remain; but when you depart from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave. D. Pedro. You embrace your charge too willingly. I think this is your daughter. Leon. Her mother hath many times told me so. Bene. Were you in doubt, sir, that you asked her? Leon. Signior Benedick, no; for Chen were you a child. D. Pedro. You have it full, Benedick: we may guess by this what you are, being a man. Truly, the lady fathers herself. Be happy, Bene. If Signior Leonato be her father, she Mess. And a good soldier too, lady. Beat. And a good soldier to a lady: but lady; for you are like an honorable father. what is he to a lord? |