marry, once before, he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.

D. Pedro. You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.

Beat. So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools. I have brought count Claudio, whom you sent me to seek.

D. Pedro. Why, how now, count? wherefore are you sad?

Claud. Not sad, my lord.

D. Pedro. How then? Sick?

Claud. Neither, my lord.

Beat. The count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well: but civil, count; civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion.1

D. Pedro. Ï' faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true; though, I'll be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is false. Here, Claudio, I have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won; I have broke with her father, and his good will obtained: name the day of marriage, and God give thee joy!

Leon. Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes: his grace hath made the match, and all grace say Amen to it!

Beat. Speak, count, 'tis your cue.

Claud. Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.-Lady, as you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for and dote upon the exchange.

you,

Beat. Speak, cousin; or, if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss, and let not him speak, neither.

D. Pedro. In faith, lady, you have a merry heart. Beat. Yea, my lord; I thank it, poor fool,2 it keeps on the windy side of care:-My cousin tells him in his ear, that he is in her heart.

Claud. And so she doth, cousin.

9 civil as an orange,] This conceit occurs likewise in Nashe's four letters confuted, 1592: "For the order of my life, it is as civil as an orange." Steevens.

1

of that jealous complexion.] Thus the quarto, 1600. The folio reads, of a jealous complexion. Steevens.

2

poor fool,] This was formerly an expression of tenderness. See King Lear, last scene: "And my poor fool is hang'd."

Malone.

Beat. Good lord, for alliance!3-Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sun-burn'd; I may sit in a corner, and cry, heigh ho! for a husband.

D. Pedro. Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.

Beat. I would rather have one of your father's getting: Hath your grace ne'er a brother like you? Your father got excellent husbands, if a maid could come by them. D. Pedro. Will you have me, lady?

Beat. No, my lord, unless I might have another for working-days; your grace is too costly to wear every day: But, I beseech your grace, pardon me; I was born to speak all mirth, and no matter.

D. Pedro. Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes you; for, out of question, you were born in a merry hour.

Beat. No, sure, my lord, my mother cry'd; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.Cousins, God give you joy!

Leon. Niece, will you look to those things I told you of? Beat. I cry you mercy, uncle.-By your grace's pardon. [Exit BEAT. D. Pedro. By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady. Leon. There's little of the melancholy element in her,

3 Good lord, for alliance!] Claudio has just called Beatrice cousin. I suppose, therefore, the meaning is,-Good Lord, here have I got a new kinsman by marriage. Malone.

I cannot understand these words, unless they imply a wish for the speaker's alliance with a husband. Steevens.

4 Thus goes every one to the world but I, and I am sun-burn'd;] What is it, to go to the world? perhaps, to enter by marriage into a settled state; but why is the unmarried lady sun-burnt? I believe we should read,-Thus goes every one to the wood but I, and I am sun-burnt. Thus does every one but I find a shelter, and I am left exposed to wind and sun. The nearest way to the wood, is a phrase for the readiest means to any end. It is said of a woman, who accepts a worse match than those which she had refused, that she has passed through the wood, and at last taken a crooked stick. But conjectural criticism has always something to abate its confidence. Snakspeare, in All's well that ends well, uses the phrase, to go to the world, for marriage. So that my emendation depends only on the opposition of wood to sun-burnt. Johnson.

I am sun-burnt may mean, I have lost my beauty, and am consequently no longer such an object as can tempt a man to marry. Steevens. 5 There's little of the melancholy element in her,] "Does not

my lord: she is never sad, but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dream'd of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing.

6

D. Pedro. She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband. Leon. O, by no means; she mocks all her wooers out of suit.

D. Pedro. She were an excellent wife for Benedick. Leon. O Lord, my lord, if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad.

D. Pedro. Count Claudio, when mean you to go to church?

Claud. To-morrow, my lord: Time goes on crutches, till love have all his rites.

Leon. Not till Monday, my dear son, which is hence a just sevennight; and a time too brief too, to have all things answer my mind.

D. Pedro. Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing; but, I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall not go dully by us; I will, in the interim, undertake one of Hercules' labours; which is, to bring signior Benedick, and the lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection, the one with the other. I would fain have it a

our life consist of the four elements ?" says Sir Toby, in Twelfth Night. So, also in King Henry V. "He is pure air and fire, and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him."

6

Malone.

she hath often dream'd of unhappiness,] So all the editions; but Mr. Theobald alters it to an happiness, having no conception that unhappiness meant any thing but misfortune, and that, he thinks, she could not laugh at. He had never heard that it signified a wild, wanton unlucky trick. Thus Beaumont and Fletcher, in their comedy of The Maid of the Mill:

66

My dreams are like my thoughts, honest and innocent: "Yours are unhappy." Warburton.

7 into a mountain of affection, the one with the other.] A mountain of affection with one another is a strange expression, yet I know not well how to change it. Perhaps it was originally written to bring Benedick and Beatrice into a mooting of affection; to bring them not to any more mootings of contention, but to a mooting or conversation of love. This reading is confirmed by the preposition with; a mountain with each other, or affection with each other, cannot be used, but a mooting with each other is proper and regular. Johnson.

Uncommon as the word proposed by Dr. Johnson may appear,

match; and I doubt not but to fashion it, if you three will but minister such assistance as I shall give you direction.

Leon. My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten nights' watchings.

Claud. And I, my lord.

D. Pedro. And you too, gentle Hero?

Hero. I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a good husband.

D. Pedro. And Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that I know: thus far can I praise him; he is of a noble strain, of approved valour, and confirm'd honesty.

it is used in several of the old plays. So, in Glapthorne's Wit in a Constable, 1639:

"Had mooted in the hall, or seen the revels

66 'Kept in the house at Christmas."

Again, in The Return from Parnassus, 1606:

"It is a plain case, whereon I mooted in our temple."

Again, ibid:

at a mooting in our temple."

And yet, all that I believe is meant by a mountain of affection is, a great deal of affection.

In one of Stanyhurst's poems is the following phrase to denote a large quantity of love:

"Lumps of love promist, nothing perform'd," &c.

Again, in The Renegado, by Massinger:

'tis but parting with

"A mountain of vexation."

Thus, also in K. Henry VIII: we find "a sea of glory." In Hamlet: "a sea of troubles." Again, in Howel's History of Venice: though they see mountains of miseries heaped on one's back." Again, in Bacon's History of K. Henry VII: "Perkin sought to corrupt the servants to the lieutenant of the tower by mountains of promises." Again, in The Comedy of Errors: "the mountain of mad flesh that claims marriage of me." Little can be inferred from the present offence against grammar; an offence which may not strictly be imputable to Shakspeare, but rather to the negligence or ignorance of his transcribers or printers.

Steevens.

Shakspeare has many phrases equally harsh. He who would hazard such expressions as a storm of fortune, a vale of years, and a tempest of provocation, would not scruple to write a mountain of affection." Malone.

8 a noble strain,] i. e. descent, lineage. So, in The Faery Queen, B. IV, C. viii, S. 33:

66 Sprung from the auncient stocke of prince's straine."

9

I will teach you how to humour your cousin, that she shall fall in love with Benedick:-and I, with your two helps, will so practice on Benedick, that, in despite of his quick wit and his queasy stomach, he shall fall in love with Beatrice. If we can do this, Cupid is no longer an archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are the only love-gods. Go in with me, and I will tell you my drift. [Exeunt.

SCENE II.

Another Room in LEONATO's House.

Enter Don JOHN and BORACHIO.

D. John. It is so; the count Claudio shall marry the daughter of Leonato.

Bora. Yea, my lord; but I can cross it.

D. John. Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be medicinable to me: I am sick in displeasure to him; and whatsoever comes athwart his affection, ranges evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this marriage?

Bora. Not honestly, my lord; but so covertly that no dishonesty shall appear in me.

D. John. Show me briefly how.

Bora. I think, I told your lordship, a year since, how much I am in the favour of Margaret, the waiting-gentlewoman to Hero.

D. John. I remember.

Bora. I can, at any unseasonable instant of the night, appoint her to look out at her lady's chamber-window. D. John. What life is in that, to be the death of this marriage?

Bora. The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go you to the prince your brother; spare not to tell him, that he hath wrong'd his honour in marrying the re

Again, B. V, C. ix, S. 32:

"Sate goodly temperaunce in garments clene,

"And sacred reverence yborn of heavenly strene." Reed. Again, in King Lear, Act V, sc. iii:

9

"Sir, you have shown to-day your valiant strain." Steevens. ·queasy stomach,] i. e. squeamish. So, in Antony and

Cleopatra:

“Who queasy with his insolence already” —

Steevens.