MESS. He 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 he be cured, MESS. I will hold friends with you, lady. BEAT. Do, good friend, LEON. You will never run mad, niece. MESS. Don Pedro is approached. Enter Don PEDRO, attended by BALTHAZAR and others, Don JOHN, CLAUDIO, and BENEDICK. 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. 4 D. PEDRO. You embrace your charge too will ingly. I think, this is your daughter. LEON. Her mother hath many times told me so. brance. your charge-] That is, your burden, your incumJOHNSON. Charge does not mean, as Dr. Johnson explains it, burden, incumbrance, but "the person committed to your care." So it is used in the relationship between guardian and ward. Douce.. BENE. Were you in doubt, sir, that you her? asked LEON. Signior Benedick, no; for then 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, lady! for you are like an honourable father. BENE. If signior Leonato be her father, she would not have his head on her shoulders, for all Messina, as like him as she is. BEAT. I wonder, that you will still be talking, signior Benedick; no body marks you. BENE. What, my dear lady Disdain! are you yet living? BEAT. Is it possible, disdain should die, while she hath such meet food to feed it, as signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in her presence. 6 BENE. Then is courtesy a turn-coat :-But it is certain, I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none. BEAT. A dear happiness to women; they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God, and my cold blood, I am of your hu fathers herself:] This phrase is common in Dorsetshire: "Jack fathers himself;" i. e. is like his father. STEEVENS. Is it possible, disdain should die, while she hath such meet food to feed it, as signior Benedick?] A kindred thought occurs in Coriolanus, Act II. sc. i: "Our very priests must become mockers, if they encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are." STEEVENS. mour for that; I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me. BENE. God keep your ladyship still in that mind! so some gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate scratched face. BEAT. Scratching could not make it worse, an 'twere such a face as yours were. BENE. Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher. BEAT. A bird of my tongue, is better than a beast of yours. BENE. I would, my horse had the speed of your tongue; and so good a continuer: But keep your way o' God's name; I have done. BEAT. You always end with a jade's trick; I know you of old. -- D. PEDRO. This is the sum of all: Leonato,signior Claudio, and signior Benedick, my dear friend Leonato, hath invited you all. I tell him, we shall stay here at the least a month; and he heartily prays, some occasion may detain us longer: I dare swear he is no hypocrite, but prays from his heart. LEON. If you swear, my lord, you shall not be forsworn.-Let me bid you welcome, my lord: being reconciled to the prince your brother, I owe you all duty. D. JOHN. I thank you :' I am not of many words, but I thank you. LEON. Please it your grace lead on? 7 I thank you :] The poet has judiciously marked the gloominess of Don John's character, by making him averse to the common forms of civility. SIR J. HAWKINS. VOL. VI. с D. PEDRO. Your hand, Leonato; we will go together. [Exeunt all but BENEDICK and CLAUDIO. CLAUD. Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of signior Leonato? BENE. I noted her not; but I looked on her. CLAUD. Is she not a modest young lady? BENE. Do you question me, as an honest man should do, for my simple true judgment; or would you have me speak after my custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex? CLAUD. No, I pray thee, speak in sober judg ment. BENE. Why, i'faith, methinks she is too low for a high praise, too brown for a fair praise, and too little for a great praise: only this commendation I can afford her; that were she other than she' is, she were unhandsome; and being no other but as she is, I do not like her. CLAUD. Thou thinkest, I am in sport; I pray thee, tell me truly how thou likest her. BENE. Would you buy her, that you inquire after her? CLAUD. Can the world buy such a jewel? BENE. Yea, and a case to put it into. But speak you this with a sad brow? or do you play the flouting Jack; to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder, 8 8 the flouting Jack;] Jack, in our author's time, I know not why, was a term of contempt. So, in King Henry IV. P. I. Act III: 66 the prince is a Jack, a sneak-cup." Again, in The Taming of the Shrew: 66 rascal fidler, "And twangling Jack, with twenty such vile terms," &c. and Vulcan a rare carpenter? Come, in what key shall a man take you, to go in the song?1 CLAUD. In mine eye, she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on. BENE. I can see yet without spectacles, and I see See in Minsheu's DICT. 1617: "A Jack sauce, or saucie Jack." See also Chaucer's Cant. Tales, ver. 14,816, and the note, edit. Tyrwhitt. MALONE. -to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder, &c.] I know not whether I conceive the jest here intended. Claudio hints his love of Hero. Benedick asks, whether he is serious, or whether he only means to jest, and to tell them that Cupid is a good hare-finder, and Vulcan a rare carpenter. A man praising a pretty lady in jest, may show the quick sight of Cupid, but what has it to do with the carpentry of Vulcan? Perhaps the thought lies no deeper than this, Do you mean to tell us as new what we all know already? JOHNSON. I believe no more is meant by those ludicrous expressions than this.-Do you mean, says Benedick, to amuse us with impro bable stories? An ingenious correspondent, whose signature is R, W. explains the passage in the same sense, but more amply. "Do you mean to tell us that love is not blind, and that fire will not consume what is combustible?" for both these propositions are implied in making Cupid a good hare-finder, and Vulcan (the God of fire) a good carpenter. In other words, would you convince me, whose opinion on this head is well known, that you can be in love without being blind, and can play with the flame of beauty without being scorched? STEEVens. I explain the passage thus: Do you scoff and mock in telling us that Cupid, who is blind, is a good hare-finder, which requires a quick eye-sight; and that Vulcan, a blacksmith, is a rare carpenter? TOLlet. After such attempts at decent illustration, I am afraid that he who wishes to know why Cupid is a good hare-finder, must discover it by the assistance of many quibbling allusions of the same sort, about hair and hoar, in Mercutio's song in the second Act of Romeo and Juliet. COLLINS. 1 to go in the song?] i. e. to join with you in your song. -to strike in with you in the song. STEEVENS. |