I stand dishonored, that have gone about
To link my dear friend to a common stale.

Leon. Are these things spoken? Or do I but dream?

D. John. Sir, they are spoken, and these things

are true.

Bene. This looks not like a nuptial.

Hero.

Claud. Leonato, stand I here?

True, O God!

Is this the prince? Is this the prince's brother?
Is this face Hero's? Are our eyes our own?

Leon. All this is so; but what of this, my lord? Claud. Let me but move one question to your daughter;

And by that fatherly and kindly power1

That you have in her, bid her answer truly.

Leon. I charge thee do so, as thou art my child. Hero. O God, defend me! How am I beset!What kind of catechizing call you this?

Claud. To make you answer truly to your name. Hero. Is it not Hero? Who can blot that name With any just reproach?

Claud.

Marry, that can Hero;

Hero itself can blot out Hero's virtue.

What man was he talked with you yesternight
Out at your window, betwixt twelve and one?
Now, if you are a maid, answer to this.

Hero. I talked with no man at that hour, my lord.
D. Pedro. Why then are you no maiden.-Leonato,
I am sorry you must hear. Upon my honor,
Myself, my brother, and this grieved count,
Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night,
Talk with a ruffian at her chamber-window;
Who hath, indeed, most like a liberal2 villain,
Confessed the vile encounters they have had
A thousand times in secret.

D. John.

Fie, fie! They are

1 i. e. "natural power." Kind is used for nature.

2 Liberal here, as in many places of these plays, means licentious be

yond honesty or decency.

Not to be named, my lord, not to be spoke of;
There is not chastity enough in language,
Without offence to utter them. Thus, pretty lady,
I am sorry for thy much misgovernment.

Claud. O Hero! what a Hero hadst thou been,
If half thy outward graces had been placed
About thy thoughts, and counsels of thy heart!
But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! farewell,
Thou pure impiety, and impious purity!
For thee I'll lock up all the gates of love,
And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang,
To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm;
And never shall it more be gracious.1

Leon. Hath no man's dagger here a point for me?

Beat. Why, how now, cousin!

you down?

HERO Swoons. Wherefore sink

D. John. Come, let us go: these things, come thus to light,

Smother her spirits up.

[Exeunt DON PEDRO, DON JOHN, and CLAUDIO. Bene. How doth the lady?

Beat.

Dead, I think;-help, uncle!

Hero! Why, Hero!-Uncle !-Seignior Benedick!

Friar?

Leon. O fate, take not away thy heavy hand!

Death is the fairest cover for her shame,

That may be wished for.

Beat.

How now, cousin Hero!

Friar. Have comfort, lady.

Leon. Dost thou look up?

Friar. Yea; wherefore should she not?

Leon. Wherefore? Why, doth not every earthly

thing

Cry shame upon her? Could she here deny
The story that is printed in her blood? 2-
Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes:

1 i. e. graced, favored, countenanced.

2 That is, "which her blushes discovered to be true."

For did I think thou wouldst not quickly die,
Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames,
Myself would, on the rearward of reproaches,
Strike at thy life. Grieved I, I had but one?
Chid I for that at frugal nature's frame?1
O, one too much by thee! Why had I one?
Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes?
Why had I not, with charitable hand,
Took up a beggar's issue at my gates;
Who smirched thus, and mired with infamy,
I might have said, No part of it is mine;
This shame derives itself from unknown loins?
But mine, and mine I loved, and mine I praised,
And mine that I was proud on; mine so much,
That I myself was to myself not mine,
Valuing of her why, she-O, she is fallen
Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea

Hath drops too few to wash her clean again!
And salt too little, which may season give
To her foul, tainted flesh!

Bene.

Sir, sir, be patient: For my part, I am so attired in wonder,

I know not what to say.

Beat. O, on my soul, my cousin is belied!
Bene. Lady, were you her bedfellow last night?
Beat. No, truly, not; although, until last night,

I have this twelvemonth been her bedfellow.

Leon. Confirmed, confirmed! O, that is stronger made,

Which was before barred up with ribs of iron!
Would the two princes lie? and Claudio lie?
Who loved her so, that, speaking of her foulness,
Washed it with tears? Hence from her; let her die.
Friar. Hear me a little;

For I have only been silent so long,

And given way unto this course of fortune,
By noting of the lady. I have marked
A thousand blushing apparitions start

1 Frame is order, contrivance, disposition of things.

Into her face; a thousand innocent shames
In angel whiteness bear away those blushes;
And in her eye there hath appeared a fire,
To burn the errors that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth.-Call me a fool;
Trust not my reading nor my observations,
Which with experimental zeal doth warrant
The tenor of my book; trust not my age,
My reverence, calling, nor divinity,
If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here
Under some biting error.

Leon.

Friar, it cannot be.

Thou seest, that all the grace that she hath left,
Is, that she will not add to her damnation

A sin of perjury; she not denies it.

Why seek'st thou then to cover with excuse
That which

appears in proper nakedness?

Friar. Lady, what man is he you are accused of? Hero. They know, that do accuse me; I know none If I know more of any man alive,

Than that which maiden modesty doth warrant,
Let all my sins lack mercy!-O my father,

Prove you
you that

any man with me conversed

At hours unmeet, or that I yesternight

Maintained the change of words with any creature,
Refuse me, hate me, torture me to death.

Friar. There is some strange misprision' in the princes.

Bene. Two of them have the very bent of honor; And if their wisdoms be misled in this,

The practice of it lives in John the bastard,

Whose spirits toil in frame of villanies.

Leon. I know not. If they speak but truth of her, These hands shall tear her; if they wrong her honor, The proudest of them shall well hear of it.

Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine,
Nor age so ate up my invention,

1 Misconception.

2 Bent is here used for the utmost degree of, or tendency to, honorable conduct.

Nor fortune made such havock of my means,
Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends,
But they shall find, awaked in such a kind,
Both strength of limb, and policy of mind,
Ability in means, and choice of friends,
To quit me of them throughly.

Friar.
Pause a while,
And let my counsel sway you in this case.
Your daughter here the princes left for dead.
Let her awhile be secretly kept in,

1 .

And publish it, that she is dead indeed;
Maintain a mourning ostentation;
And on your family's old monument
Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites
That appertain unto a burial.

Leon. What shall become of this? What will

this do?

Friar. Marry, this, well carried, shall on her behalf
Change slander to remorse; that is some good.
But not for that dream I on this strange course,
But on this travail look for greater birth.
She dying, as it must be so maintained,
Upon the instant that she was accused,
Shall be lamented, pitied, and excused,
Of every hearer; for it so falls out,

That what we have, we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value; then we find
The virtue, that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours.-So will it fare with Claudio.
When he shall hear she died upon his words,
The idea of her life shall sweetly creep
Into his study of imagination;

And every lovely organ of her life

Shall come apparelled in more precious habit,
More moving-delicate, and full of life,

Into the eye and prospect of his soul,

Than when she lived indeed. Then shall he mourn,

1 Show, appearance.

2 i. e. raise to the highest pitch.

VOL. I.

61