Leon. My heart is with your liking. Here come the Prince and Claudio. And my help. Enter Don PEDRO and CLAUDIO, with Attendants. D. Pedro. Good morrow to this fair assembly. Leon. Good morrow, Prince; good morrow, Claudio: We here attend you. Are you yet determin'd To-day to marry with my brother's daughter? Claud. I'll hold my mind, were she an Ethiop. Leon. Call her forth, brother; here's the friar ready. D. Pedro. Good morrow, Benedick. matter, That you have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness? [Exit ANTONIO. Why, what's the Claud. I think he thinks upon the savage bull. Tush! fear not, man, we'll tip thy horns with gold, And all Europa shall rejoice at thee.— Re-enter ANTONIO, with the Ladies masked. Which is the lady I must seize upon ?1 Ant. This same is she, and I do give you her. Claud. Why, then she's mine. - Sweet, let me see your face. Leon. No, that you shall not, till you take her hand Before this friar, and swear to marry her. Claud. Give me your hand before this holy friar: I am your husband, if you like of me. Hero. And when I liv'd, I was your other wife : [Unmasking. And when you lov'd, you were my other husband. Hero. Nothing certainer : One Hero died defil'd; but I do live, And, surely as I live, I am a maid. D. Pedro. The former Hero! Hero that is dead! When, after that the holy rites are ended, Bene. Soft and fair, friar. - Which is Beatrice? 1 Seize upon is a technical term in the law, for take possession of. 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 Bene. love me? Troth, no; no more than reason. Beat. Why, then my cousin, Margaret, and Ursula Are much deceiv'd; for they did swear you did. Bene. They swore that you were almost sick for me. Beat. They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me. Bene. 'Tis no such matter. Then you do not love me? Beat. No, truly, but in friendly recompense. Leon. Come, cousin, I'm sure you love the gentleman. Claud. And I'll be sworn upon't that he loves her; For here's a paper, written in his hand, A halting sonnet of his own pure brain, Fashion'd to Beatrice. 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. In [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. 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 conclusion. my For thy part, Claudio, I did think to have beaten thee; but, in that thou art like to be my kinsman, live unbruis'd, and love my cousin. Claud. I had well hop'd 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. 138 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. Leon. We'll have dancing afterwards. Bene. First, of my word; therefore play, music. thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife. Enter a Messenger. Mess. My lord, your brother John is ta'en in flight, And brought with armed men back to Messina. ACT V. Prince, Bene. Think not on him till to-morrow: I'll devise thee brave punishments for him. Strike up, pipers! [Dance. Exeunt. INTRODUCTION TO KING HENRY THE EIGHTH. THIS HIS play was undoubtedly among the latest of the Poet's writing: there is some reason for thinking it to have been his last. It was never printed till in the folio of 1623; consequently that is our only authority for the text. The play has reached us in a tolerably good condition; most of the errors in the original copy being rectified without much difficulty, and there being but few passages where the true reading is in doubt. The play is first heard of in connection with the burning of the Globe Theatre, on the 29th of June, 1613. Howes the chronicler informs us that at the time of the fire "the house was filled with people to behold the play of Henry the Eighth." A letter also of Thomas Lorkin to Sir Thomas Puckering speaks of the fire as having occurred "while Burbadge's company were acting at the Globe the play of Henry the Eighth, and there shooting off certain chambers in the way of triumph.' But our fullest account is from a letter of Sir Henry Wotton to his nephew, dated July 6, 1613: "The King's Players had a new play called All is True, representing some principal pieces in the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty. Now King Henry making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped did light on the thatch, where it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very ground." Some of the circumstances here noted clearly point to the play in hand. Sir Henry, to be sure, speaks of the piece by the title "All is True;" but the other two authorities describe it as "the play of Henry the Eighth." And Lorkin, in stating the cause of the fire, uses the very word, chambers, which is used in the original stage-direction of the play. So that the discrepancies in regard to the name infer no more than that the play then had a double title, as many other plays also had. And the name used by Sir Henry is unequivocally referred to in the Prologue, the whole argument of which turns on the quality of the piece as being true, in the historic sense, or as being made up of "chosen truth." The piece in performance at the burning of the Globe Theatre is described by Wotton as "a new play;" and it will hardly be questioned that he knew well what he was saying. The internal evidence of the piece itself all draws to the same conclusion as to the time of writing. In that part of Cranmer's prophecy which refers to King James, we have these lines: "Wherever the bright Sun of heaven shall shine, All agree that the first allusion in these lines is to the founding of the colony in Virginia, the charter of which was renewed in 1612, the chief settlement was named Jamestown, and a lottery opened in aid of the colonists. The last part of the quotation probably refers to the marriage of the King's daughter Elizabeth with the Elector Palatine, which took place in February, 1613. The marriage was a theme of intense joy and high anticipations to the English people, as it seemed to knit them up with the Protestant interest of Germany. Concurrent with these notes of allusion to passing events, are the style, language, and versification of the piece itself. The historical matter of the play, so far as relates to the fall of Wolsey and the divorce of Catharine, was derived originally from George Cavendish, who was gentleman-usher to the great Cardinal, and himself an eye-witness of much that he describes. His Life of Master Wolsey is among the best specimens extant of the older English literature; the narrative being set forth in a clear, simple, manly eloquence, which the Poet, in some of his finest passages, almost literally transcribed. Whether the book had been printed in Shakespeare's time, is uncertain; but so much of it as fell within the plot of the drama had been embodied in the chronicles of Holinshed and Stowe. The fifth Act is remarkable as yielding a further disclosure of the Poet's reading. The incidents, and in many cases the very words, are taken from Fox the martyrologist, whose Acts and Monuments of the Church, first published in 1563, had grown to be a very popular book in the Poet's time. The "fierce vanities" displayed in the Field of the Cloth of Gold, with an account of which the play opens, occurred in June, 1520, and the death of Buckingham in May, 1521. The court assembled for the divorce began its work on the 18th of June, 1529, and was dissolved, without concluding any thing, on the 23d of July. On the 17th of October following, Wolsey resigned the Great Seal, and died on the 29th of November, 1530. In July, 1531, Catharine withdrew from the Court, and took up her abode at Ampthill. Long before this time, the King had been trying to persuade Anne Boleyn, one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, to be a sort of left-hand wife to him; but an older sister of hers had already held that place, and had enough of it so she was resolved to be his right-hand wife or none at all; and, as the Queen would not recede from her appeal to the Pope, Anne still held off till she should have more assurance of the divorce being carried through. In September, 1532, she was made Marchioness of Pembroke, and was privately married to the King on the 25th of January, 1533. Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury the next March, and went directly about the business of the divorce, which was finished on the 24th of May. This was followed, in June, by the coronation of the new Queen, and in September by the birth and christening of the Princess Elizabeth. Soon after the divorce, Catharine removed to Kimbolton, where, in the course of the next year, 1534, she had to digest the slaughter of her steadfast friends, Fisher and More; as the peculiar temper of the King, being then without the eloquence of the great Cardinal or the virtue of the good Queen to assuage it, could no longer be withheld from such repasts of blood. Catharine died on the 8th of January, 1536, which was some two years and four months after the birth of Elizabeth. Shakespeare, however, reverses the order of these two events, -a transposition very helpful to the purpose of the drama, without any harm to the substantial truth of history. As for the matter of Cranmer and the Privy Council, in Act V., this did not take place till 1544, more than eleven years after the event with which the play closes; another judicious departure from the actual order of things. The aptness of the matter for just stage-effect was evident enough, and it is used to that end with no little skill; but, as the plan of the piece required it to wind up with the christening of Elizabeth, the Poet could nowise avail himself of that matter but by anticipating and drawing it back to an earlier time. It is a question of no little interest, how far and in what sort the Poet here stands committed to the Reformation; if at all, whether more as a religious or as a national movement. He certainly shows a |